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PORTRAIT    GALLERY 


OF    EMINENT 


MEN  AND  WOMEN 


OF 


EUROPE  AND   AMERICA. 


EMBRACING 


HISTORY,    STATESMANSHIP,    NAVAL    AND    MILITARY    LIFE,    PHILOSOPHY 
THE   DRAMA,   SCIENCE,   LITERATURE   AND   ART. 


WITH 


BIOGRAPHIES. 


BY 


EVERT    A.  DUYCKINCK, 

n 
IUTHOR  or  "PORTRAIT  QALLEBY  or  EMINENT  AMERICANS,"  "CYCLOPEDIA  OP  AMERICAN  urERATOBB,"  "HISTORY  OF  THE  WAS 

TOR  THE  ONION,"  ETC.,  ETC. 


ILLUSTRATED   WITH  HIGHLY  FINISHED  STEEL  ENGRAVINGS 

FROM 
ORIGINAL  PORTRAITS  BY  THE  MOST  CELEBRATED  ARTISTS. 

IN  Two  VOLUMES. — VOL,  I. 


NEW  YORK: 

JOHNSON  &   GITTENS,   PUBLISHERS, 

122  &  124  DUANE  STREET. 


Entered  according  to  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  1873,  by 

JOHNSON,  WILSON  &  COMPANY, 
In  the  Office  of  the  Librarian  of  Congress,  at  Washington,  D.  0. 


CONTENTS    OF    VOLUME   I. 


SAMUEL  JOHNSON,  . 

OLIVER  GOLDSMITH,    . 
*.  HANNAH  MORE, 

FREDERICK  II.,    . 
^EDWARD  GIBBON,    . 
.'MARIE  ANTOINETTE,    . 

DAVID  GARRICK,     . 

GEORGE  WASHINGTON, 
^MADAME  D'ARBLAY, 

EDMUND  BURKE,          . 

SIR  JOSHUA  REYNOLDS,    . 

MARTHA  WASHINGTON,        Y 

BENJAMIN  FRANKLIN, 

ROBERT  BURNS,  . 
CHARLOTTE  CORDAY, 
v'JOHANN  WOLFGANG  GOETHE, 

JOHN  PHILIP  KEMBLE,    . 

ABIGAIL  ADAMS,  . 

GILBERT-MOTIER  DE  LAFAYETTE, 

THOMAS  JEFFERSON,    . 

MARIA  EDGEWORTH, 

FRIEDRICH  SCHILLER,  . 

HENRY  GRATTAN,    .        . 

SARAH  VAN  BRUGH  JAY,  . 

NAPOLEON  BONAPARTE,     . 
ROBERT  FULTON,  . 
^•MADAME  DE  STAEL,  . 

HOHATIO  NELSON,  . 

FOHN  PHILPOT  CURRAN,     . 

JANE  AUSTEN,       . 

WILLIAM  WILBERFORCE,    . 

GEORGE  STEPHENSON,   . 


PAGR. 

5 

28 

,  43 
60 

.   75 

87 

.  106 

123 
.  139 

159 
.  169 

182 
,  192 

204 
.  218 

226 
.  240 

255 
.  263 

279 
,  293 

310 
,  323 

334 
.  344 

360 
.  368 

378 
,  396 

409 

416 

433 


-v  CONTENTS. 

SARAH  SIDDONS, .  446 

ALEXANDER  VON  HUMBOLDT,       .  .  .  .  .  .  .  466 

WALTER  SCOTT, .  .          473 

DOROTHY  PAYNE  MADISON, .  .488 

LORD  BROUGHAM, 494 

LORD  BYRON,      .  ,507 

ELIZABETH  FRY, 529 

ROBERT  PEEL,   .  . 539 

WILLIAM  WORDSWORTH, 544 

FELICIA  DOROTHEA  HEMANS, 566 

DUKE  OF  WELLINGTON, .577 

THOMAS  MOORE,  .....  .  .593 

LYDIA  HUNTLEY  SIGOURNEY,  .  .  ...  .  .  .605 

ANDREW  JACKSON,     .  ,    315 


PREFACE. 

4  T)IOGRAPHY,"  says  Archbishop  Whately,  "  is  allowed  on  all  hands  to  be 
l^y  one  of  the  most  attractive  and  profitable  kinds  of  reading."  The  reason 
of  this  ir.  obvious.  It  has,  when  properly  treated,  the  ease  and  variety  of  the 
most  agreeable  forms  of  literature,  and  its  subject-matter  most  nearly  concerns 
the  reader.  In  its  very  nature  it  is  bound  to  a  certain  interest  of  progress 
and  development,  such  as  we  look  for  in  the  Drama.  Reaching  back  fre- 
quently into  the  story  of  an  ancient  lineage,  the  infant  human  life  is  introduced 
with  a  species  of  historic  interest  in  the  concerns  and  opportunities  of  the 
family.  The  formative  years  of  childhood  succeed,  with  the  influences  of 
education  which,  if  they  do  not  create  the  character,  go  far  to  shape  its  manifes- 
tation to  the  world.  How  infinitely  varied  are  these  forms  of  development, 
how  peculiar  the  action  of  the  individual  mind  !  Then  comes  the  great  struggle 
for  success  as  the  years  roll  on,  till  the  man,  with  noble  endeavor,  obtains  the 
mastery,  and  whether  in  art,  science,  literature  or  public  affairs,  places  himself  on 
a  pinnacle  where  he  will  be  surveyed  through  all  coming  time.  The  end  which 
crowns  the  work  of  the  personal  career  is  yet  to  be  reached  ;  and  as  we  have 
watched  the  rising  of  the  hero  with  hope  and  anxiety,  we  look  upon  his  age  and 
departure  with  sympathy  and  admiration.  To  observe  and  chronicle  the  achieve- 
ments and  vicissitudes  of  every  year  of  busy  life  is  the  province  of  the  biographer, 
and  there  are  no  resources  of  literature  which  may  not  on  occasion  be  serviceable 
to  the  work.  Hence,  books  of  biography  are  more  and  more,  in  the  hands  of 
consummate  masters  of  the  art,  claiming  the  highest  rank  in  our  libraries.  They 
are  no  longer  scant  and  meagre  records  of  a  few  personal  details,  but,  in  the  case 
of  men  of  eminence,  require  for  their  perfection  a  vast  deal  of  the  resources  of 
history  and  philosophy.  In  the  hands  of  Macaulay  and  Carlyle,  biography,  in  its 
most  attractive  exhibition,  is  made  to  do  the  work  of  history,  and  nobly  it  accom- 
plishes the  design.  Nor  is  this  simply  a  daring  achievement  of  men  of  genius. 
The  greater  part  of  the  knowledge  which  we  have  of  history,  it  may  safely  be 
said,  is  at  this  day  conveyed  through  the  lives  of  distinguished  personages. 

Looking  at  the  work  before  us — the  exhibition  of  the  LIVES  OF  EMINENT 
MEN  AND  WOMEN  OF  EUROPE  AND  AMERICA,  from  the  period  of  the  Revolution 
to  the  present  day — we  find,  when  we  have  made  up  the  list,  a  singularly 
general  representaton  of  the  nationalities  of  the  present  century  as  well  as  of 

(3) 


PREFACE. 


the  various  modes  of  illustrious  achievement  All  the  GREAT  NATIONS  OF 
EUROPE  supply  their  men  of  thought  and  action,  their  great  sovereigns,  theii 
founders  of  governments,  their  distinguished  military  chieftains,  their  statesmen, 
their  philanthropists,  their  scientific  discoverers,  their  poets  and  artists.  The 
new  birth  of  ITALY  is  exhibited  in  the  record  of  Cavour,  Garibaldi,  and  Victor 
Emanuel,  and  the  early  rule  of  Pope  Pius ;  FRANCE  has  her  Marie  Antoinette, 
her  Charlotte  Corday,  her  Napoleons,  her  Thiers ;  RUSSIA,  her  Alexander,  with 
his  grand  work  of  national  reform  ;  GERMANY  emerges  from  the  old  revolution 
with  her  Goethe,  Schiller,  Humboldt,  to  enter  upon  the  empire  with  King 
William,  Bismarck  and  Von  Moltke  ;  ENGLAND  is  illustrated  from  the  days  of 
Johnson  to  those  of  Dickens  and  Tennyson  in  literature ;  she  has  her  statesmen 
in  Bright,  Cobden  and  Gladstone ;  her  warriors  on  sea  and  land  in  Nelson  and 
Wellington ;  her  philanthropists  of  both  sexes  from  Wilberforce  to  Florence 
Nightingale;  her  race  of  female  novelists  from  Jane  Austen  to  Charlotte 
Bronte ;  her  inventors  in  such  examples  as  Stephenson  and  Faraday ;  SCOTLAND 
has  her  Burns,  Scott  and  Livingstone;  IRELAND  her  Burke,  Goldsmith,  Edge- 
worth,  Curran,  Grattan,  and  O'Connell ;  while  in  the  UNITED  STATES,  all  of  the 
classes  we  have  alluded  to  are  represented  in  Washington,  Franklin,  Jefferson, 
Lincoln,  Grant,  Webster,  Fulton,  Morse,  Peabody,  Bryant  and  others  of  either 
sex,  and  so  we  might  enumerate  the  whole  of  the  hundred  and  more  subjects 
of  these  biographies.  In  no  work  of  the  kind,  thus  far  published,  has  the  same 
attention  been  given  to  FEMALE  BIOGRAPHY  AND  PORTRAITURE.  One-third  of 
the  portraits  will  be  of  illustrious  women,  eminent  in  history,  literature,  art  or 
philanthropy. 

It  has  been  the  object  to  present  these  "  lives  "  of  persons  of  eminence  suffi- 
ciently in  detail  to  interest  the  reader  in  their  personal  history ;  to  exhibit,  to  the 
young  particularly,  the  foundation  of  their  success  in  early  self-denial  and  resolu- 
tion ;  to  include  all  that  can  be  gathered  within  the  necessary  limits  to  display 
the  strong,  essential  elements  of  character.  The  artistical  department  of  the 
work  is  greatly  indebted  to  the  ability  of  our  native  painter,  MR.  ALONZO  CHAPPEL 
In  many  instances  the  portraits  have  been  re-drawn  by  him,  while  the  selection . 
of  originals  has  been  made  from  the  most  eminent  painters,  including  Sir  Joshua 
Reynolds,  Sir  Thomas  Lawrence,  Paul  de  la  Roche,  and  others.  They  are  here 
presented  in  a  novel  style,  with  characteristic  accessories.  Unusual  pains  have 
been  taken  in  this  country  and  in  Europe,  to  obtain  the  most  reliable  authori- 
ties ;  while  the  engraving  of  the  whole  has  been  entrusted  to  experienced  artists 
of  the  highest  reputation  in  London  and  New  York,  at  a  great  outlay  of  cost 


SAMUEL    JOHNSON. 


XN  all  English  biography  it  is  ad- 
mitted that  the  Life  of  Samuel 
Johnson,  as  exhibited  by  Boswell  and 
his  associates  in  the  work,  stands 
forth  the  fullest  in  detail  and  least 
likely  to  be  exhausted  in  interest,  one 
generation  succeeding  another  since  it 
was  written  and  the  latest  still  perusing 
it  with  eager  curiosity.  Never  before 
or  since,  has  so  minute  and  faithful  a 
record  been  given  to  the  world  of  the 
personal  career  of  a  man  of  letters, 
probably  of  any  man  in  any  station  of 
life.  The  nearest  approach  to  the  nar- 
rative in  English  literature  is  one  in- 
spired by  it,  the  life  of  Sir  Walter 
Scott,  by  Lockhart,  but  that  is  com- 
paratively a  simple  production  when 
placed  by  the  side  of  the  performance 
of  his  elder  countryman.  Of  Burns, 
also,  we  know  a  great  deal,  as  we  do  of 
the  personality  of  Scott.  The  names 
of  these  men  bring  before  us  at  once 
their  noble  traits  of  character,  and  we 
may  conceive  on  the  instant  how  they 
would  think  and  act  under  any  cir- 
cumstances. So  too  of  others  of  whom 
less  has  been  written.  We  may  know 
the  men ;  but  we  do  not  know  so  much 
of  them  as  we  may  gather  in  a  few 
hours  from  our  book-shelves  of  the  life 


of  Johnson.  Between  what  he  \\  rote 
of  himself  and  what  was  written  of 
him  by  others,  of  whom  his  great  bi- 
ographer was  only  the  chief,  what  with 
the  revelations  of*  his  diaries,  the  can- 
dor of  his  correspondence  and  the 
vigorous  impression  of  himself  upon 
his  moral  writings,  we  may  be  inti- 
mately acquainted  with  him  in  his  in- 
ner as  well  as  his  outer  life  through 
the  entire  seventy-five  years  of  his  ex- 
istence. 

For  the  story  begins  with  his  cradle. 
He  was  anecdotical  even  in  his  infancy. 
Non  vine  diis  animosus  infans.  His 
friend,  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds,  turning 
his  pencil  in  later  years  from  that 
scarred  and  seamed  countenance,  im- 
mortal on  his  canvas,  in  a  fanciful  pic- 
ture portrayed  the  child  as  he  may 
then  have  appeared,  a  companion  to 
his  infant  Hercules : 

"  The  baby  figure  of  the  giant  mass, 
Of  things  to  come  at  large." 

The  portrait  is  that  of  a  vigorous, 
healthy  child,  and  in  that  respect  it 
was  but  imaginary  for  the  real  John- 

O  v    t 

son  was,  in  his  early  years,  sickly  and 
diseased,  so  miserable  an  object  one  of 
his  aunts  afterwards  told  hitr  thai 

(5 


SAMUEL  JOHNSON. 


'she  would  not  have  picked  such  a 
poor  creature  up  in  the  street."  But 
Reynolds,  always  a  poet  painter, 
was  intent  upon  a  glorification  of 
his  subject.  This  seemingly  unhap- 
py child  came  into  the  world  in 
the  city  of  Lichfield,  Staffordshire, 
England,  on  the  18th  of  September, 
1709.  The  house  in  which  he  was  born 
is  still  standing  in  1872  a  familiar 
object  to  many  pilgrims  at  the  corner 
of  a  street  opening  named  St.  Mary's 
Square,  "a  tall  and  thin  house  of 
three  stories  with  a  square  front  and  a 
roof  rising  steep  and  high,"  as  it  is  de- 
scribed by  Nathaniel  Hawthorne  who 
visited  it,  and  as  it  may  be  seen  repre- 
sented in  many  familiar  engravings. 
Here  at  the  time  of  the  birth  of  his 
son  Samuel,  Michael  Johnson,  a  native 
of  Derbyshire,  of  obscure  extraction, 
rvas  settled  in  a  humble  way  as  a  book- 
seller and  stationer.  When  he  was 
more  than  fifty  he  was  married  to 
Sarah  Ford,  of  a  peasant  family  in 
Warwickshire.  She  was  then  at  the 
age  of  forty.  Two  sons  were  born  to 
them — Samuel,  three  years  after  the 
union,  and  three  years  later,  Nathaniel, 
who  died  at  the  age  of  twenty-five. 
In  the  year  of  his  son's  birth,  Michael 
Johnson  was  sheriff  of  the  county ;  he 
owned  the  house  in  which  he  resided 
and  generally  bore  a  respectable  posi- 
tion in  the  place.  His  business  as  a 
bookseller  was  extended  by  his  excur- 
sions into  the  neighboring  towns  where 
he  opened  a  shop  on  market  days,  held 
auctions  and  offered  for  sale  works  of 
various  kinds, — law,  history,  mathe- 
matics and  a  good  stock  of  divinity  for 
the  serious  and,  to  please  the  ladies," 
as  one  of  his  circulars  informs  us,  a 


"  store  of  fine  pictures  and  paper-hang 
ings  "  which  were  to  be  sold  precisely 
at  noon  "  that  they  may  be  viewed  by 
daylight ;"  for  Michael  Johnson  was  a 
conscientious  man  and  would  practice 
no  deception  even  in  the  sale  of  pic- 
tures. He  was  of  a  strong  and  robust 
frame,  but  of  a  melancholy  tempera- 
ment, arising  it  may  be  from  a  scrofu 
lous  taint  which  his  son  inherited  with 
his  disposition.  The  mother  of  John- 
son is  described  by  Boswell  as  "a 
woman  of  distinguished  understand- 
ing ;"  but  from  the  account  we  have 
of  her  from  her  son  she  was  quite  il- 
literate, so  that  she  could  not  sympa- 
thize at  all  with  her  husband's  love  of 
books ;  nor  was  she  able  to  assist  him 
in  his  business  as  it  became  less  pros- 
perous and  the  family  encountered  the 
hardships  of  poverty.  Her  uneducated 
piety  was  sometimes  troublesome  to 
her  son  in  his  boyhood  when  she  kept 
him  home  on  Sundays  to  read  the  dull 
and  sombre  homilies  of  "  The  Whole 
Duty  of  Man ;"  but  she  was  kind  to 
him  with  a  mother's  fondness  enhanced 
by  his  sufferings  from  ill-health,  and 
he  always  entertained  a  grateful  re- 
collection of  her. 

The  first  authentic  anecdote  of  John- 
son, as  a  child,  belongs  to  his  third  year, 
when  being  thirty  months  old,  at  the 
advice  of  Sir  John  Floyer,  a  notable 
physician  at  Lichfield,  he  was  taken  by 
his  mother  to  London  to  be  relieved 
of  his  scrofulous  disease,  the  King's 
Evil,  as  it  was  called,  by  the  magical 
touch  of  Queen  Anne,  who,  following 
the  royal  precedents  from  the  days  of 
Edward  the  Confessor,  as  may  be  read 
IL  Shakspeare,  was  supposed  to  be 
gifted  with  power  to  relieve  that  coja« 


SAMUEL  JOHNSON. 


plaint.  Johnson  must  have  been 
among  the  last  on  whom  that  cere- 
mony was  performed  for  which  in  the 
old  editions  of  the  Books  of  Common 
Prayer  there  was  an  especial  religious 
service.  Queen  Anne  was  the  last  to 
practice  this  mode  of  cure.  The  iden- 
tical gold  coin  or  ".touch  piece  "  which, 
according  to  custom  the  child  Johnson 
received  on  the  occasion  may  now  be 
seen  preserved  as  a  curiosity  in  the 
British  Museum.  The  Johnson  family 
were  inveterate  tories  and  were  in- 
clined to  believe  to  the  end  in  the  effi- 
cacy of  kings.  Johnson  professed  to 
retain  a  recollection  of  this  introduction 
to  royalty,  remembering  a  boy  crying 
at  the  palace  when  he  went  to  be 
touched  and  the  appearance  though 
shadowy  of  Queen  Anne.  He  had,  he 
told  Mrs.  Thrale,  "a  confused,  but 
somehow  a  sort  of  solemn  recollection 
of  a  lady  in  diamonds  and  a  long  black 
hood."  Another  incident  of  about  the 
same  time,  savoring  also  of  toryism,  is 
of  a  decidedly  apocryphal  character, 
though  circumstantially  related  to  Bos- 
well  by  a  lady  of  Lichfield  whose 
grandfather  witnessed  the  scene  and 
which  is  also  represented  on  a  bas-re- 
lief of  the  monument  to  Johnson  in 
front  of  his  birth-place.  In  this  he  is 
pictured  as  a  child  of  three  years  old 
held  on  his  father's  shoulders  listening 
to  the  preaching  of  the  famous  high- 
church  Doctor  Sacheverell.  It  was 
impossible,  the  tale  runs,  to  keep  the 
boy  at  home,  for  "  young  as  he  was  he 
believed  he  had  caught  the  public 
spirit  and  zeal  for  Sacheverell  and 
would  have  staid  for  ever  in  the 
church,  satisfied  with  beholding  him." 
Boswell  gave  the  story  in  his  book, 


for  he  thought  it  "curiously  charac 
teristic,"  but  his  editor,  Croker,  set  the 
idle  tale  at  rest  by  reminding  the 
reader  that  at  the  time  assigned  the  tory 
preacher  was  interdicted  from  preach 
ing,  and  though  he  had  visited  Lich 
field  in  his  triumphal  progress  through 
the  counties,  it  was  when  Johnson  was 
but  nine  months  old.  There  is  also  a 
stupid  story  of  his  having  recited  to 
his  mother  at  the  same  tender  age  of 
three,  four  bad  lines  of  his  composi- 
tion, an  epitaph  on  a  duckling  which 
he  had  trod  upon  and  killed. 

Passing  beyond  these  mythical  in- 
ventions to  the  sober  facts  of  biogra- 
phy we  come  upon  a  "Dame  Oliver,  a 
schoolmistress,  such  as  Shenstone  has 
described,  who  taught  the  young 
Samuel  to  read  English,  a  dame  so 
wonderfully  gifted  that  she  could 
peruse  black  letter,  calling  upon  her 
pupil  to  borrow  from  his  father's 
stock  a  Bible  for  her  in  that  character. 
Then  came  a  preceptor,  Tom  Brown, 
who  published  a  spelling-book  which 
he  dedicated  to  the  universe ;  and 
after  him  Hawkins,  the  usher  of  the 
Lichfield  school,  with  whom  Johnstfn 
learned  much,  passing  to  the  upper 
form,  literally  into  the  hands  of  Mr. 
Hunter ;  for  this  head  master  "  whipt 
me  very  well,"  as  his  great  pupil  af- 
terwards stated  with  pride,  being 
prone  as  a  moralist  to  defend  this 
method  of  implanting  learning  in  the 
youthful  mind.  He  thought  it  much 
better  than  the  emulation  system 
which,  he  would  say,  created  jealousy 
among  friends,  while  the  flogging  set- 
tled the  matter  at  once  and  the  knowl- 
edge was  secured.  Johnson,  however 
was  an  apt  scholai  and,  not  withstand 


SAMUEL  JOHNSON. 


ing  his  admiration  of  the  birch,  was 
probably  very  little  indebted  to  it  for 
his  education.  He  early  showed  great 
powers  of  memory,  an  indication  of  a 
strong  and  fertile  mind,  that  faculty 
implying  both  sunshine  and  replenish- 
ing of  the  soil.  He  would  help  his 
fellow  pupils  in  their  studies,  and  was 
BO  popular  with  them  that  they  would 
call  for  him  at  his  home  and  carry  him 
to  school  in  a  sort  of  triumphal  pro- 
cession, one  stooping  to  bear  him  upon 
his  back  while  two  others  supported 
him  on  either  side.  His  eyesight, 
which  was  defective  from  his  birth, 
kept  him  from  the  usual  boyish  sports, 
but  he  contrived  wonderfully  well,  as 
he  afterwards  said,  "  to  be  idle  without 
them."  Though  capable  of  great  ex- 
ertions, with  a  mind  always  actively 
employed,  he  was  constitutionally  en- 
couraged to  fits  of  indolence  which 
sometimes  got  the  better  of  him,  as  he 
was  often  in  the  habit  of  confessing 
and  lamenting.  As  a  boy  he  liked  to 
wander  idly  in  the  fields,  talking  to 
himself  and  had  an  immoderate  fond- 
n^ss  for  losing  himself  in  old  romances 
such  as  the  vicar  ejected  from  Don 
Quixote's  library. 

At  the  age  of  fifteen  he  was  sent  to 
the  Grammar  School  of  Stourbridge, 
in  Worcestershire,  where  he  passed 
about  twelve  months,  returning  home 
to  spend  a  couple  of  years  "  loitering," 
says  his  biographer,  "  in  a  state  very 
unworthy  his  uncommon  abilities." 
He  was,  however,  all  the  while  an  om- 
nivorous reader,  browsing  on  the  mis- 
cellaneous stock  of  his  father's  books, 
one  day  lighting  upon  the  Latin  Works 
of  Petrarch,  which  he  devoured  with 
avidity — certainly  not  the  proof  of  an 


idle  employment  of  his  time.  He  had. 
moreover,  already  in  his  school  exer- 
cises proved  his  ability  in  various  po 
etical  translations  of  Virgil  and  Horace, 
so  that,  when  in  his  nineteenth  year  he 
was,  with  the  promised  assistance  of  a 
gentleman  of  Shropshire,  entered  a 
commoner  of  Pembroke  College,  Ox- 
ford, he  carried  with  him  a  stock  of 
attainments  which  at  once  gave  him  a 
creditable  position  at  that  University. 
On  the  night  of  his  arrival  he  was  in- 
troduced with  his  father,  "who  had 
anxiously  accompanied  him,"  to  his  in- 
tended tutor,  Mr.  Jorden,  when,  spite 
of  his  ungainly  appearance,  for  he  even 
then  appears  to  have  had  something  of 
that  uncouthness  of  person  and  man- 
ner afterwards  so  much  commented 
upon,  he  impressed  the  company  favor- 
ably by  his  ready  citation  of  a  passage 
from  Macrobius,  an  out-of-the-way  au- 
thor for  a  novice  to  be  acquainted  with. 
But  Johnson  was  no  novice  in  learned 
reading ;  and  though  he  showed  some 
waywardness  in  attendance  upon  rou- 
tine duties,  he  soon  gained  the  respect 
of  the  authorities  by  his  talent,  and  es- 
pecially attracted  their  attention  by  an 
easily  executed  brilliant  translation 
into  Latin  verse  of  the  Messiah  of  Pope, 
who  is  said  to  have  remarked,  on  being 
shown  the  production  by  a  son  of  Dr 
Arbuthnot,  then  a  student  at  Oxford 
"  The  writer  of  this  poem  will  leave  it 
a  question  for  posterity,  whether  his 
or  mine  be  the  original." 

Johnson  passed  about  three  years  at 
the  University,  his  course  being  great- 
ly impeded  by  his  poverty,  for  the 
assistance  which  had  been  promised 
failed  to  be  given,  and  the  waning  for- 
tunes of  his  father  enabled  him  to  eke 


SAMUEL  JOHNSON. 


out  for  his  son  but  a  scanty  support, 
which  finally  failed  altogether  and  com- 
pelled him  to  leave  without  a  degree. 
So  extreme  was  his  want  of  resources 
tliiit  he  could  hardly  maintain  the  or- 
dinary decencies  of  the  place,  going 
about,  or  rather,  shrinking  from  view, 
with  worn-out  shoes,  through  which 
his  feet  were  painfully  visible,  and 
when  some  friendly  hand  placed  a  new 
pair  at  his  door,  throwing  them  away 
with  indignation  as  an  insult  to  his 
poverty.  Such  was  the  pride  of  John- 
son, an  honest  pride  often  shown  in  his 
career  through  life,  which  preserved 
his  independence  and  kept  him  free 
from  the  baseness  with  which  he  might, 
from  the  associations  into  which  he 
was  inevitably  thrown,  have  otherwise 
been  entangled.  His  association  with 
Oxford  was  doubtless  one  of  the  import- 
ant influences  of  his  life,  though  it  bore 
no  immediate  fruit  in  academic  honors. 
He  acquired  there  no  inconsiderable 
knowledge  of  Greek,  must  have  added 
largely  to  his  stores  of  reading  and,  lover 
of  learning  as  he  ever  was,  been  pro- 
portionately impressed  with  the  genius 
of  the  place.  He  had  some  reputation 
while  there  as  "  a  gay  and  frolicsome 
fellow,"  it  is  said,  and  was  disposed  to 
be  satirical  and  censorious.  This  he 
long  afterwards  characteristically  ex- 
plained :  "  Ah,  I  was  mad  and  violent. 
It  was  bitterness  which  they  mistook 
for  frolic.  I  was  miserably  poor,  and 
I  thought  to  fight  my  way  by  my  liter- 
ature and  my  wit ;  so  I  disregarded  all 
power  and  all  authority."  In  truth 
there  was  seriousness  enough  in  his 
life  at  this  time.  During  his  first  va- 
cation, passed  at  his  home  at  Lich- 
6eld,  he  became  the  prey  of  so  oppres- 
2 


sive  a  melancholy  that  existence  waa 
almost  insupportable  to  him  under  the 
anticipation  of  impending  insanity. 
It  was  but  lit  tie  relief  to  the  evil  at 
the  time  that  the  burden  was  imagin- 
ary, and  that  he  showed  the  absurd- 
-ity  of  his  fears  by  engrossing  them  to 
the  admiration  of  his  physician  with 
remarkable  ability  in  most  excellent 
Latin.  The  hypochondria,  like  the  ter- 
rors of  a  dream,  produced  much  suffer- 
ing ;  but  it  was  of  a  kind  over  which 
he  learned  to  gain  control,  though  its 
shadows  accompanied  him  through  life. 
It  was  also  while  at  Oxford  that  he  be- 
came the  subject  of  those  deep  reli- 
gious convictions  which,  with  a  dash 
of  superstition,  never  departed  from 
him.  The  seeds  of  piety  were  early 
implanted  in  him  by  his  mother's 
teachings;  but,  as  we  have  seen,  the 
method  was  not  always  well  judged, 
and  in  his  youth  he  was  disposed  to 
some  laxity  of  opinion  which  was  re- 
strained by  the  habits  of  Oxford  and 
extinguished  by  a  famous  book  of 
evangelical  piety  which  he  met  with 
there — "  Law's  Serious  Call  to  a  Holy 
Life."  He  took  it  up,  he  tells  us,  "  ex- 
pecting to  find  it  a  dull  book,  as  such 
books  generally  are,  and  perhaps  to 
laugh  at  it,  but  I  found  Law  quite  an 
even  match  for  me ;  and  this  was  the 
first  occasion  of  my  thinking  in  ear- 
nest of  religion,  after  I  became  capa- 
ble of  rational  enquiry."  Keligion 
thenceforth  became  intimately  associ- 
ated with  his  thoughts  and  actions. 
A  few  months  after  Johnson  left 
Oxford  his  father  died  at  Lichfield,  at 
the  age  of  seventy-six,  leaving  scant 
property  to  his  family ;  for  out  of  his 
effects  the  portion  which  came  to  h's 


10 


SAMUEL  JOHNSON. 


son  Samuel,  excluding  that  which  he 
might  ultimately  derive  from  his  moth- 
er, was  but  twenty  pounds.  With  this 
he  was  to  begin  the  world  at  the  age 
of  twenty-two.  But  the  regard  in 
which  his  father  had  been  held  was 
something  of  an  inheritance  to  him, 
and  the  knowledge  which,  according 
to  the  old  proverb,  survives  houses  and 
lands,  was  to  prove  its  excellence.  He 
looked  to  his  scholarship  as  his  nrst 
means  of  support.  The  prospect  of 
advantage  from  it  was  for  a  long  time 
not  a  cheering  one.  He  began  by  ac- 
cepting the  humblest  position  as  a 
teacher,  that  of  usher  or  under-master 
in  the  school  of  Market-Bosworth,  in 
Leicestershire,  to  which  he  proceeded 
on  foot.  The  situation  was  necessarily 
irksome  to  one  of  his  temperament, 
who  always  grasped  at  knowledge  with 
impatience,  seldom  during  his  life  read- 
ing a  book  through,  but,  with  an  in- 
stinctive sagacity,  hastily  "plucking 
)\it  the  heart  of  its  mystery."  He 
was  in  his  capacity  of  usher  con- 
lemned  to  the  painful  iteration  of  the 
rales  of  grammar,  the  inflections  of 
nouns  and  the  moods  of  verbs,  with 
boys  to  whom  to-day's  lesson  was  a  re- 
flection of  that  of  yesterday,  and  identi- 
cal with  that  of  the  morrow — a  melan- 
choly drudgery  for  the  quick-minded 
-Johnson ;  it  was  doubtless  also  aggra- 
vated according  to  the  manntu  of  boys 
by  half  concealed  ridicule  of  his  pecu- 
liarities, and,  when  the  whole  was  sup- 
plemented by  what  he  considered  "  in- 
tolerable harshness  "  on  the  part  of  the 
citled  patron  of  the  school,  he  threw 
up  the  employment  in  disgust.  A  few 
months  were  sufficient  for  this  un- 
happy experiment. 


Leaving  Market-Bosworth  with  no 
other  engagement  in  view,  Johnson 
accepted  an  invitation  from  Mr.  Hec- 
tor his  school-fellow  at  Lichfield,  to 
visit  him  at  Birmingham.  Johnson 

O 

passed  some  time  in  tkis  city,  and 
there  wrote  his  first  book,  a  transla- 
tion from  the  French  of  a  Voyage  to 
Abyssinia  by  father  Lobo,  a  Jesuit 
missionary,  for  which  he  received 
from  the  bookseller  Warren  with 
whom  he  lodged  the  payment  of  five 
guineas.  With  praiseworthy  indus- 
try and  sagacity,  Boswell,  with  the 
assistance  of  Burke  examined  this 
book  to  ascertain  if  it  bore  any  marks 
of  that  peculiarly  rich  and  effective 
style  which  became  known  to  the 
world  as  the  peculiar  manner  of 
Johnson.  So  far  as  the  translation 
itself  was  concerned  they  found  only 
traces  of  the  idiom  of  the  original ; 
but  when  they  came  to  the  preface 
their  search  was  rewarded.  In  the 
words  of  Boswell  "the  Johnsonian 
style  begins  to  appear."  Imbedded 
like  rich  nuggets  in  the  flowing 
stream  were  some  brilliant  specimens 
of  genuine  Johnsonese,  a  foretaste  of 

o  ' 

that  inimitable  generalization  sup- 
ported by  picturesque  detail  and  ani- 
mating suggestions,  enlivened  by  epi- 
gram and  antithesi,  a  pomp  of 
words  in  stately  music  supporting 
a  burthen  of  thought — the  comprehen- 
sion of  the  poet,  the  wit  and  philoso- 
pher. 

After  a  residence  of  about  a  year 
at  Birmingham,  he  returned  to  Lich 
field,  where  he  made  an  ineffectual  at- 
tempt at  literary  occupation  by  issu 
ing  proposals  for  publishing  by  sub 
scription  the  Latin  poems  of  Politiao 


SAMUEL  JOHNSON. 


11 


with  a  life  of  the  author,  an  under- 
taking which  found  few  to  encourage 
't  though  the  price  was  small ;  so, 
nothing  came  of  it.  Two  years  now 
passed  without  any  distinct  employ- 
ment to  further  his  prospects  in  life, 
when  in  July,  1736,  he  was  married 
to  a  Mrs.  Porter,  the  widow  of  a  mer- 
cer at  Birmingham  with  whom  he 
had  become  acquainted  in  his  former 
stay  in  that  city  during  the  life-time 
of  her  first  husband.  There  was  a 
great  disparity  in  the  age  of  the  pair, 
Johnson,  at  the  time  of  the  marriage, 
being  in  his  twenty-seventh  year 
and  the  bride  in  her  forty-eighth. 
Nor  was  she  remarkable  for  her  per- 
sonal charms,  or  any  refinement  in 
her  appearance,  if  we  may  credit  the 
account  of  Garrick  in  his  description 
of  her  to  Boswell.  But  the  mar- 
riage, notwithstanding  all  inequalities, 
proved  a  happy  one.  However  the 
lady  might  appear  to  the  youthful 
Garrick  and  the  world,  she  was  an 
angel  of  light  to  her  husband,  whose 
poverty  she  alleviated  and  consoled, 
and  whose  mental  ability  she  had  suf- 
ficient understanding  to  appreciate. 

This  alliance  brought  with  it  eight 
hundred  pounds,  the  widow's  fortune, 
and,  encouraged  by  this  new  resource, 
Johnson,  who  had  failed  in  an  en- 
deavor to  procure  the  mastership  of  a 
grammar  school  in  Warwickshire,  re- 
solved to  set  up  a  species  of  academy 
of  his  own.  He  accordingly  hired  an 
imposing  looking  house,  at  Edial,  in 
the  vicinity  of  Lichfield,  and  invited 
the  attendance  of  pupils  to  board 
with  him  and  be  taught  the  Latin 
and  Greek  languages.  Only  three 
came,  two  of  whom  were  David 


Garrick,  of  illustrious  memory,  and 
his  brother  George,  sons  of  a  gentle- 
man, a  half-pay  captain,  at  Lichfield. 
With  such  scant  encouragement  it  is 
a  marvel  that  Johnson's  patience  held 
out  for  a  year  and  a  half;  but  it  last- 
,ed  probably  as  long  as  his  means ; 
and  while  these  continued,  spite  of  the 
drudgery  of  teaching,  the  home 
must  have  been  to  him.  a  comfortable 
one,  fascinated,  as  the  young  lover  was 
— for  Johnson  was  really  a  chivalric 
lover  —  with  the  perfections  of  his 
"  Tetty,"  as  he  fondly  called  his  wife 
Elizabeth. 

Johnson,  who  had  employed  some 
of  his  leisure  at  Edial  Hall,  as  his 
house  is  called,  in  the  construction  of 
a  portion  of  his  tragedy  "  Irene,"  now 
by  the  advice  of  his  friend  Gilbert 
Walmsley,  a  gentleman  of  Lichfield, 
Register  of  its  Ecclesiastical  Court,  a 

o 

man  of  reading  and  influence,  resolv- 
ed to  pursue  the  work  with  a  view  to 
its  introduction  on  the  stage.  This 
directed  his  thoughts  to  London,  the 
certain  refuge  of  provincial  literary  as- 
pirants of  all  times.  There  if  anywhere 
in  England  he  might  turn  his  literary 
talents,  his  sole  capital,  to  account. 
His  pupil,  Garrick,  about  being  sent 
to  a  school  at  Rochester  to  finish  his 
education,  Johnson's  friend,  Walmsley, 
gave  them  a  joint  letter  to  the  head 
master,  the  Rev.  Mr.  Colson,  a  man  of 
eminence  as  a  mathematician.  Com- 
mending to  him  the  youthful  Garrick, 
he  wrote/  "  He  and  another  neighbor 
of  mine,  one  Mr.  Samuel  Johnson,  set 
out  this  morning  (March  2,  1737),  for 
London,  together;  Davy  Garrick  to 
be  with  you  early  the  next  week,  and 
Mr.  Johnson  to  try  his  fate  with  a 


12 


SAMUEL  JOHNSON. 


tragedy,  and  to  see  to  get  himself  em- 
ployed in  some  translation,  either  from 
the  Latin  or  the  French.  Johnson  is 
a  very  good  scholar  and  poet,  and  I 
have  great  hopes  will  turn  out  a  fine 
tragedy-writer."  Nothing  particular 
appears  to  have  come,  so  far  as  John- 
son was  concerned,  of  Colson's  letter. 
He  was  out,  of  the  way  at  Rochester 
in  a  quiet  seclusion,  and  Johnson  was 
to  fight  for  his  life  against  severe  odds 
in  the  rough  training-school  of  Lon- 
don. The  booksellers  were  his  first 
resort.  Applying  to  one  of  the  craft, 
with  the  intimation  that  he  expected 
to  get  his  living  as  an  author,  the 
dealer  in  books,  surveying  his  robust 
frame  with  a  significant  look,  remark- 
ed, "You  had  better  buy  a  porter's 
knot ;"  and  the  man  who  uttered  this 
rude  speech  Johnson  got  to  reckon 
among  his  best  friends.  Occasional 
literature  offers  the  most  available  re- 
source to  a  young  writer  in  search  of 
employment,  and  Johnson  was  natur- 
ally attracted  to  it  in  one  of  its  better 
forms.  Edward  Cave,  the  son  of  a 
provincial  shoemaker,  with  some  edu- 
cation at  Rugby  school,  had  found  his 
way  into  literature  in  London  through 
his  employment  as  a  printer,  and  in  the 
face  of  the  usual  auguries  of  failure,  had 
successfully  established  the  "Gentle- 
man's Magazine,"  the  most  famous  pro- 
duction of  its  class  and  still  surviving, 
though  changed  with  the  wants  of  the 
times,  approaching  its  hundred  and 
fiftieth  year — a  longevity  utterly  be- 
yond any  of  its  short-lived  race.  When 
Johnson  came  to  London  it  had  been 
five  or  six  years  in  existence,  and  its 
fame  had  reached  him  at  Lichfield. 
He  had  written  a  letter  to  its  founder 


two  or  three  years  before,  offering  to 
contribute  poems  and  criticisms,  and 
he  now  addressed  him  again,  propos- 
ing a  new  translation  from  the  Italian 
of  Father  Paul  Sarpi's  History  of  the 
Council  of  Trent.  It  was  not,  however, 
till  about  a  year  later  that  he  became 
a  contributor  to  the  Magazine,  his  first 
appearance  being  as  the  author  of  a 
complimentary  Horatian  ode  in  Latin, 
addressed  to  Sylvanus  Urban,  as  the 
editor  designated  himself  on  the  title- 
page  of  his  work.  After  this  he  was 
engaged  as  a  regular  contributor,  and 
for  several  years  derived  his  chief  sup- 
port from  this  source.  There  were  no 
parliamentary  reporters  in  those  days, 
the  publication  of  debates  being  inter- 
dicted; and  to  meet  the  public  curi- 
osity without  violating  the  law,  it  was 
the  custom  of  Cave  to  publish  a  dis 
guised  account  of  the  proceedings  un 
der  the  name  of  "  Reports  of  the  De- 
bates of  the  Senate  of  Lilliput,"  in 
which  the  leading  speakers  figured 
under  absurd  disguised  names,  in  a 
clumsy  slang  language  invented  for  the 
occasion.  The  mask  was  awkwardly 
worn,  and  not  intended  to  conceal  the 
features.  In  this  contrivance  Johnson 
was  employed  in  the  "Gentleman's 
Magazine "  to  write  out  the  debates, 
often  from  the  scantiest  of  material,  be- 
ing left  to  his  own  resources  to  supply 
thought  and  words.  This  he  did  with 

O 

much  effect,  bestowing  his  best  elo- 
quence it  is  said  on  the  side  of  the  to- 
ries,  of  whom  from  his  childhood  he 
was  among  the  most  resolute  if  not  the 
most  bigoted. 

Services  like  these  might  have  se- 
cured a  scanty  compensation  barely 
sufficient  to  keep  soul  and  body  toge 


SAMUEL  JOHNSON. 


13 


ther,  with  little  comfort  for  either ;  but 
Johnson,  happily,  mindful  of  his  poet- 
ical faculty,  employed  it  in  these  early 
months  in  the  metropolis  on  a  task 
which  raised  him  at  once  to  a  higher 
level,  gave  him  assurance  of  a  posi- 
tion in  the  world  of  letters,  and  which 
doubtless  had  the  most  favorable  effect 
upon  his  character  in  sustaining  him 
through  the  dark  days,  aye,  years  of 
trial  and  hardships  yet  before  him. 
Pope  was  at  this  time  at  the  height  of 
his  reputation,  in  the  maturity  'of 
his  powers,  having  produced  his  best 
works,  and  among  the  latest  his  ex- 
quisite adaptation,  to  modern  English 
society,  of  the  satires  and  epistles  of 
Horace.  This  was  a  species  of  liter- 
ature eminently  adapted  to  gain  the 
admiration  of  Johnson,  whose  own 
reading  was  always  subservient  to  a 
better  appreciation  of  the  daily  life 
around  him.  Few  scholars,  so  inti- 
mate with  the  past,  have  lived  so 
heartily  in  the  present  as  Johnson. 
No  author  has  more  closely  identified 
the  life  of  all  ages  in  his  writings,  or 
so  demonstrated  its  essential  moral 
unity.  It  was  an  easy  labor  for  him, 
therefore,  to  supply  with  modern  ex- 
amples the  scheme  of  an  ancient  poet 
who  had  made  Home  in  the  fulness  of 
its  development  the  subject  of  his  song. 
In  the  sagacity  and  moral  force  of 
Juvenal  he  had  an  author  to  his  liking, 
and  in  his  descriptions  of  city  life  a 
strong  ground  for  his  sympathy.  It  is 
quite  worthy  of  being  noticed  that  the 
first  important  production  which  John- 
son gave  to  the  world  is  stamped  with 
the  name  of  London.  Choosing  the 
third  satire  of  Juvenal  for  his  subject, 
that  quaint  picture  of  Rome,  sketched 


by  the  departing  Umbritius  as  he 
shakes  off  the  dust  of  the  town  from 
his  feet,  he  transferred  its  spirit  to  the 
world  of  England  of  his  own  times, 
and  he  accomplished  this  so  gracefully; 
with  so  much  of  taste,  feeling  and 
power,  that  it  secured  him  at  once  a 
distinguished  place  among  the  poets 
of  England.  It  is  interesting  to  trace 
the  modest  manner  in  which  this  work 
was  brought  forward.  We  first  hear 
of  it  in  a  very  supplicating  letter  to 
Cave,  the  printer,  a  letter  which  no- 
thing but  extreme  poverty  could  have 
extracted  from  a  man  like  Johnson  on 
such  an  occasion.  He  submits  the 
poem  to  his  consideration,  thinly  dis- 
guised as  the  production  of  another 
a  person,  he  writes,  who  "  lies  at  pre- 
sent under  very  disadvantageous  cir- 
cumstances of  fortune,"  and,  a  conces- 
sion which  is  the  strongest  proof  of 
his  necessity,  offers  to  alter  any  stroke 
of  satire  which  the  printer  may  dis- 
like. Cave,  upon  this,  sends  the  author 
a  "  present "  for  his  immediate  relief,  ac- 
cepts the  work,  and  suggests  the  name 
of  Dodsley  the  publisher  for  the  ti- 
tle page.  Dodsley  proves  «duite  willing 
to  have  a  share  in  it,  thinking  it,  as 
he  said,  "  a  creditable  thing  to  be  con- 
cerned in;"  and  so,  one  morning  in 
May,  1738,  the  very  same  on  which 
appeared  Pope's  "  Epilogue  to  the  Sa 
tires,"  a  sequel  to  the  "Imitations  of 
Horace,"  Johnson's  "London"  was 
given  to  the  world.  It  was  the  first 
introduction  of  the  name  of  Samuel 
Johnson  to  the  polite  society  of  Eng- 
land, and  it  was  a  sufficient  one.  The 
literati  of  London  hailed  in  the  new 
poet  a  rival  or  successor  to  Pope ;  the 
scholars  of  Oxford  were  delighted.  ,snd 


u 


SAMUEL  JOHNSON. 


Pope  himself  approved  the  work.  Be- 
ing told  that  the  author  was  an  obscure 
man  named  Johnson,  for  his  name  did 
not  appear  on  the  title  page,  he  re- 
marked that  he  would  soon  be  brought 
to  light.  So  favorable  generally  was 
the  reception  of  the  poem  that  a  sec- 
ond edition  of  it  was  called  for  in  a 
week. 

Comparing  this  work  with  the  simul- 
taneous production  of  Pope,  the  satire 
of  the  man  of  twenty-nine  with  that 
of  the  man  of  fifty,  the  preference  must 
be  given  to  youth  over  experience.  It 
is  quite  fair  to  test  Pope  by  the  quo- 
tations from  his  writings — for  no  Eng- 
lish writer  has  been  quoted  to  such  an 
extent — but  there  are  more  remember- 
ed familiar  lines  in  Johnson's  "  Lon- 
don," than  in  Pope's  "  1738,"  as  the 
satire  was  called  on  its  first  appear- 
ance. While  the  poem  thus  gained  its 
author  reputation,  its  success  did  lit- 
tle to  mend  his  fortunes.  It  produced 
him  only  ten  guineas,  half  the  sum  or 
less,  that  was  given  at  the  time  for  a 
hack  political  pamphlet ;  and  Johnson 
was  left  a  living  illustration  of  one  of 
the  finest  lines  in  the  poem  itself: 

' '  Slow  rises  worth,  by  poverty  depressed. " 

That  poverty  was  so  pressing  that 
Johnson  in  his  despair  would  again 
have  assumed  the  office  of  a  teacher, 
the  mastership  of  a  school  in  Leicester- 
shire being  offered  to  him  and  willing- 
ly accepted,  if  he  could  have  complied 
with  the  condition.  To  hold  the  situ- 
ation, it  was  necessary  that  he  should 
have  the  degree  of  Master  of  Arts. 
Oxford  was  thought  of  and  set  aside, 
the  request  being  considered  too  bold 
i  one  for  that  high  quarter ;  but  Earl  | 


Gower,  a  patron  of  the  school,  thought 
it  worth  while  to  solicit  through  a 
friend  the  intervention  of  Dean  Swifl 
to  secure  the  coveted  honor  from  the 
University  of  Dublin.  The  English 
nobleman  plead  hard  for  "  the  pooi 
man"  whom  he  wished  to  serve,  de 
scribing  him  in  his  letter  "  starved  to 
death  in  translating  for-  booksellers. 
which  has  been  his  only  subsistence 
for  some  time  past."  But  fortunately 
nothing  came  of  it ;  else  Johnson  might 
have  been  lost  to  London  and  the 
world,  and  served  only  as  a  notable 
head-master  or  a  curiosity  among  ped- 
agogues in  the  local  annals  of  a  county 
history.  The  law  seems  then  to  have 
been  thought  of,  and  Johnson  had  many 
requisites  in  subtilty  and  force  of  mind 
for  the  profession ;  but  here  again  a 
degree  was  wanted,  and  the  project,  if 
seriously  entertained,  wTas  abandoned. 
So  he  was  left  to  the  booksellers. 
Reviving  the  plan  of  a  translation  of 
Father  Paul  Sarpi,  a  prospectus  was  is- 
sued, some  subscriptions  obtained  and 
several  sheets  of  the  work  printed, when 
it  was  found,  a  strange  coincidence,  thai 
it  had  been  already  undertaken  by  an- 
other Samuel  Johnson  in  London ;  and 
in  the  discussion  which  ensued  between 
the  two,  the  execution  of  it  was  given 
up  by  both.  At  the  conclusion  of  on<? 
of  his  letters  to  Cave,  relating  to  the 
translation,  Johnson  signs  himself  Im- 
pransus.  He  had  not  dined  that  day, 
a  statement  which  might  mean  some 
thing  or  nothing;  but  in  Johnson's 
case  it  has  been  generally  taken  to 
mean  something — for  Johnson,  in  com- 
mon with  his  needy  literary  brethreu 
of  the  day,  may  very  likely  have  been 
in  want  of  a  dinner — and  the  absence 


SAMUEL  JOHNSON. 


15 


of  a  dinner  to  Johnson  was  no  slight 
orivation.  So  the  years  wore  on  while 
Johnson  who  was  now  living  with  his 
wife  in  lodgings  in  London  or  its  vici- 
nity, eked  out  a  scanty  subsistence  by 
minor  literary  labors,  chiefly  essays, 
biographies  and  translations  for  the 
"  Gentleman's  Magazine."  In  1744,  on 
the  death  of  the  poet  Savage,  he  pub- 
lished anonymously  a  life  of  that  ex- 
traordinary adventurer,  whom  he  had 
known  intimately  in  his  parti-colored 
career  in  the  metropolis,  whose  as- 
sumptions and  gleams  of  dashing 
prosperity  he  wondered  at,  whose 
poverty  he  had  shared  and  whose  fate 
he  pitied.  The  book  in  which  Johnson 
narrated  his  adventures  is  unique  in 
biography.  We  know  not  where  to 
find  anything  so  natural,  candid  and 
spontaneous,  so  feeling  and  at  the  same 
time  amusing  a  sketch  of  a  vagabond 
existence.  It  is  essentially  the  history 
of  a  bastard  with  an  instinct  for  high 
life  in  his  composition  triumphant  over 
all  the  mortifications  and  disasters  of 
debt  and  poverty;  a  sketch  wonder- 
fully real  and  as  ideal  as  any  fancifully 
embellished  portrait  drawn  by  the 
pencil  of  Lamb.  Indeed,  it  somehow 
recalls  to  us  in  its  spirit  Elia's  account 
of  the  "  triumphant  progress  "  of  that 
splendid  borrower,  Ralph  Bigod,  Esq., 
in  his  exquisite  Essay  on  "The  Two 
Races  of  Men."  The  shifts  and  expe- 
dients of  a  poor  devil  author,  the 
grandeur  of  his  mind  supplying  any 
deficiencies  of  his  pocket,  have  never 
been  more  graphically  related  than  in 
this  charming  biography  by  Johnson. 
It  is  pervaded  throughout  by  the  finest 
sense  of  humor,  and  is  the  highest 
proof  which  can  be  afforded  of  John- 


son's superiority  to  the  casual,  improv- 
ident career  of  the  careless  company 
into  which  he  was  often  thrown  in  the 
early  period  of  his  life  in  London.  On 
every  page  there  is  the  revelation  of 
some  absurd  folly  or  pretension,  or  of 
darker  profligacy,  yet  the  picture  upon 
the  whole  is  a  genial  one ;  for  Johnson, 
though  he  knew  its  minutest  peculi- 
arities, was  so  far  above  the  scene  in 
moral  elevation  as  to  look  calmly  upon 
it  with  the  eye  of  a  philosopher,  as  a 
curious  study  of  human  nature.  It  is 
a  delightful  mingling  of  details  and 
generalities ;  the  actual  losing  its  gross- 
ness  in  the  ideal.  In  other  hands,  Sav- 
age would  most  likely  have  appeared 
as  an  indifferent  poet  and  profligate 
spendthrift,  cruelly  treated  by  his  ti- 
tled, disreputable  mother,  if  his  story 
was  credited;  but,  in  himself,  an  im- 
practicable vagabond  whom  no  kind- 
ness could  serve  or  generosity,  how- 
ever large,  relieve,  and  who,  for  those 
times,  met  an  appropriate  fate  in  an 
early  departure  from  life  within  the 
walls  of  a  debtor's  prison.  But  the 
pen  of  Johnson  could  never  be  em- 
ployed in  unfeeling  censure  of  the  un- 
fortunate, nor  'even  of  the  criminal 
The  scamp  is  never  disguised  in  bis 
narrative,  though  he  sometimes  ap- 
pears to  be  playing  with  the  subject ; 
while  the  moral  that  ends  the  story, 
"that  nothing  will  supply  the  want 
of  prudence,  and  that  negligence  and 
irregularity  long  continued,  will  make 
knowledge  useless,  wit  ridiculous,  and 
genius  contemptible,"  loses  none  of  its 
force  by  the  fairness,  indulgent  sympa 
thy  and  good  humor  of  the  narrative 
on  which  it  is  built. 

The  rapidity  with  which  the  boot 


16 


SAMUEL  JOHNSON. 


was  written  has  been  commented  upon 
*s  something  remarkable,  forty-eight 
of  its  printed  octavo  pages  being  writ- 
ten at  a  sitting  which  lasted  through 
the  night — a  noticeable  thing,  certain- 
ly, when  it  is  considered  that  it  is  not 
altogether  a  simple,  straightforward, 
flowing  narrative ;  but,  that  it  is  con- 
stantly interrupted  by  pregnant  reflec- 
tions, its  sentences  pointed  with  wit 
and  tied  up  in  knots  of  philosophy. 
But  Johnson  was  full  of  his  theme, 
and  what  he  wrote  he  had  doubtless 
of^en  muttered  to  himself  in  his  ha- 
bitual reflections  on  the  adventures  of 
his  hero  as  they  passed  before  him. 

A  book  composed  in  such  a  manner 
could  not  fail  of  attention,  especially 
as  the  subject  of  it  was  already  a  per- 
son of  notorious  public  interest,  whose 
career  had  been  invested  with  the  un- 
failing attraction  of  piquant  scandal  in 
high  life.  Boswell  tells  us  how  Sir 
Joshua  Reynolds,  "  on  his  return  from 
Italy,  met  with  it  in  Devonshire,  know- 
ing nothing  of.  its  author,  and  began  to 
read  it  while  he  was  standing  with  his 
arm  leaning  against  a  chimney-piece. 
It  seized  his  attention  so  strongly,  that, 

O    «/  / 

not  being  able  to  lay  down  the  book 
till  he  had  finished  it,  when  he  at- 
tempted to  move,  he  found  his  arm 
totally  benumbed." 

The  year  following  the  production 
of  the  biography  of  Savage,  Johnson 
published  a  pamphlet  of  "  Observations 
on  the  tragedy  of  Macbeth,"  with  pro- 
posals for  a  new  edition  of  Shake- 
speare, which  gained  him  the  commen- 
dation of  Warburton,  who  was  then 
engaged  on  a  similar  undertaking. 
Johnson  began  his  studies  for  the 
work,  but  it  was  for  a  time  laid  aside 


for  another  of  more  pressing  impor 
tance,  his  "  Dictionary  of  the  English 
Language,"  the  plan  of  which  was  is- 
sued in  1747.  The  work  was  a  joint 
enterprise  of  the  trade,  seven  London 
booksellers,  at  the  head  of  whom  waa 
Dodsley,  contracting  for  its  composi 
tion  at  the  price  of  fifteen  hundred  and 
seventy-five  pounds.  The  prospectus 
was  dedicated  to  the  Earl  of  Chester- 
field, the  fashionable  patron  of  letters 
of  the  time,  who  sent  the  author  the 
accustomed  gratuity  of  ten  guineas  for 
the  compliment.  The  labor  involved 
in  such  an  undertaking  would  have 
been  far  more  formidable  to  most 
other  authors  than  it  proved  to  John- 
son, who,  confident  of  his  own  abilities, 
in  a  resolute  way  resolved  the  task  into 
one  of  great  simplicity,  expending  his 
strength  mainly  on  the  definitions  and 
illustrations  from  classic  authors.  Em- 
ploying no  less  than  six  assistants  as 
amanuenses,  he  handed  over  to  them 
for  transcription  passages  or  sentences 
from  the  best  English  authors  which 
he  had  selected  for  the  purpose,  with 
the  word  which  he  intended  to  illu«- 
trate,  underlined.  The  word  was  writ- 
ten on  a  slip  of  paper  with  the  accom 
panying  citation,  and  thus  the  Diction- 
ary was  in  a  great  part  formed  as  an 
index  of  classic  authors.  When  thus 
arranged  in  alphabetical  order,  defi 
nitions  were  added,  with  etymologies, 
derived  from  the  best  authorities.  Of 
course,  he  was  under  great  obligations 
to  his  predecessors ;  but  the  work  was 
distinctly  marked  by  his  mental  habits, 
and  consequently,  notwithstanding  the 
increased  value  of  later  philological 
acquirements  in  his  successors,  is  re- 
produced to  this  day  for  our  libraries 


SAMUEL  JOHKSOJS. 


17 


as  emphatically  Johnson's  Dictionary. 
Opening  the  single  capacious  volume 
now  in  use,  no  unmeet  representative 
of  the  burly  form  of  Johnson,  as  Au- 
gustus compared  Horace  to  the  fat  lit- 
tle roll  of  his  poems,  we  may  light  at 
random  on  pages  illuminated  by  his 
philosophical  acumen,  rich  with  the 
stores  of  his  various  reading  from  the 
Bible  and  Shakespeare,  through  the 
nest  English  authorship  to  Pope  and 
Swift,  while,  interspersed  with  the 
sound,  manly  definitions,  are  several 
touches  of  satire  and  humor,  inter- 
posed, not  more,  perhaps,  by  prejudice, 
than  as  a  relief  to  the  weary  labor  of 
the  work.  In  one  of  these  he  defines 
the  word  oats,  "a  grain,  which,  in 
England  is  generally  given  to  horses, 
but  in  Scotland,  supports  the  people ;" 
and  in  another,  "pension,"  as  "an  al- 
lowance made  to  any  one  without  an 
equivalent,  in  England,  being  generally 
understood  to  mean  pay  given  to  a 
state  hireling  for  treason  to  his  coun- 
try," and  "  pensioner — a  slave  of  state, 
hired  by  a  stipend  to  obey  his  master," 
definitions  which  were  rather  incon- 
venient to  him,  when  he  came  himself 
to  occupy  that  relation  to  his  country. 
To  the  word  "  Lich,"  which  enters  into 
the  composition  of  Lichfield,  his  native 
town,  he  adds  an  interpretation  o'f  the 
latter  word,  "  the  field  of  the  dead,  a 
city  in  Staffordshire,  so  named  from 
martyred  Christians,"  with  the  invoca- 
tion, Salve  magna  parens  ! 

The  Dictionary  was  seven  years  in 
progress.  On  the  eve  of  its  appear- 
ance, in  1755,  Lord  Chesterfield  sought 
to  revive  the  good  feeling  of  the  author 
towards  him  exhibited  at  the  start,  by 
some  handsome  notices  of  the  book  in 
3 


advance  in  the  periodical  essays  enti 
tied,  "  The  World ;"  but,  Johnson,  who 
had  been  provoked  by  neglect  in  a  visit 
or  two  which  he  had  paid  to  the  no- 
bleman's drawing-room,  or  knocking 
in  vain  at  his  door,  was  in  no  humor 
to  dedicate  to  him  the  finished  work. 
On  the  contrary,  he  spurned  the  flat- 
tering overtures,  and  in  a  spirit  of  in- 
dependence, the  echo  of  which  rings 
in  noble  halls  to  this  day,  addressed  a 
remarkable  letter  to  the  Earl,  which 
has  done  more  to  keep  the  writer  in 
popular  remembrance  than  the  best 
pages  of  his  "Rambler." 

To  grace  the  title-page  of  his  Diction 
ary,  Oxford  conferred  upon  Johnson 
the  degree  of  M.  A.  in  1755 ;  LL.D. 
came  twenty  years  later  from  that 
University,  and,  in  the  meantime,  the 
same  degree  had  also  been  given  by 
Dublin.  It  was  only  in  the  latter  part 
of  his  life  that  he  was  known  by  the 
title  so  familiar  to  us,  of  Dr.  Johnson. 

In  the  interval,  while  Johnson  was 
engaged  upon  the  Dictionary,  he  had 
published  in  1749  a  companion  to  his 
"London,"  in  a  version  of  the  tenth 
satire  of  Juvenal,  which  he  entitled, 
"The  Vanity  of  Human  Wishes."  In 
this,  as  in  his  previous  version,  he  had 
to  contend  in  the  literal  part  of  his 
work  with  the  muse  of  Dryden,  who 
translated  both  poems;  but  Jornson 
had  the  advantage  of  a  wider  interpre- 
tation in  his  introduction  of  modern 
instances  and  manners ;  while  his  be- 
nevolent disposition  led  him  to  softer 
the  asperities  of  the  original.  In  the 
fierce  picture  of  a  vicious  old  age,  for 
instance,  which  darkens  the  brilliancy 
of  the  Latin  poem,  Johnson  has  intro- 
duced,— an  idea  entirely  of  his  own 


IS 


SAMUEL  JOHNSON. 


sonception, — a  sketch  of  the  decline  of 
life,  animated  by  purity  and  virtue: 

'  But  grant,  the  virtues  of  a  temp'rate  prime 
Bless  with  an  age  exempt  from  scorn  or  crime; 
An  age  that  melts  with  unperceiv'd  decay. 
And  glides  in  modest  innocence  away  ; 
Whose  peaceful  day  benevolence  endears, 
Whose      night      congratulating      conscience 

cheers  ; 

The  gen'ral  fav'rite  as  the  gen'ral  friend  ; 
Such  age  there  is,    and  who   shall  wish  its 

end  ?" 

The  sketch  of  the  life  of  the  man  of 
.etters  is  also  his  own,  sadly  inspired 
by  his  observation  and  experience : — 

"  Should  no  disease  thy  torpid  veins  invade, 
Nor  melancholy's  phantoms  haunt  thy  shade; 
let  hope  not  life  from  griei  or  danger  free, 
Nor  think  the  doom  of  man  revers'd  for  thee ; 
Deign  on  the  passing  world  to  turn  thine  eyes, 
And  pause  awhile  from  letters,  to  be  wise ; 
There  mark  what  ills  the  scholar's  life  assail, 
Toil,  envy,  want,  the  patron  and  the  jail." 

In  one  noble  historic  passage  he  has 
tairly  rivalled  the  genius  of  Juvenal, 
that  in  which  the  career  of  Charles 
XII.  is  substituted  for  that  of  Hanni- 
bal. In  fertility  of  incident,  ease  and 
rapidity  of  movement,  the  union  of 
personal  emotion  with  historic  gran- 
deur, it  stands  unrivalled.  Every 
school-boy  knows  it,  and  the  story  as 
told  in  these  verses  is  "familiar  as 
household  words,"  of  the  hero  who 

"left  the  name  at  which  the  world  grew  pale, 
To  point  a  moral  or  adorn  a  tale. " 

For  this  poem  Johnson  received  but 
fifteen  guineas  from  Dodsley — a  small 
advance  on  the  previous  poem. 

The  year  1749  saw  also  the  produc- 
tion on  the  stage  of  Drury  Lane  of 
Johnson's  tragedy  of  "Irene,"  which 
had  been  for  some  time  finished.  It 
was  brought  forward  by  Garrick,  who 
gjave  i*  his  best  support,  including 


himself,  Barry  and  King  in  the  cast 
with  Mrs.  Gibber  and  Mrs.  Pritchard 
but  it  was  by  no  means  well  adapted 
for  the   stage,  being  deficient  in  dra 
matic  interest  and  variety  of  incident — 
a  didactic  poem  in  fact,  in  the  form  of 
dialogue.     It  was  carried  through  nine 
nights ;  the  profits  of  which  to  the  au 
thor,  with  the  sum  paid  by  the  pub- 
lisher, amounted  to  nearly  three  hun- 
dred pounds.     On  the  first  night  the 
play  was  in  danger,  at  an  unfortunate 
passage,  of  being  damned.     Johnson, 
on  being  asked  how  he  felt  as  to  the 
failure  of  his  tragedy,  stoically  replied, 
"  Like  the  Monument ! "     He  knew  his 
powers  too  well  to  tempt  the  dramatic 
line  again. 

The  "  Vanity  of  Human  Wishes  "  and 
"  Irene  "  were  succeeded  in  the  spring  of 
the  following  year  by  the  "  Rambler,"  a 
series  of  moral  essays,  somewhat  after 
the  plan  of  the  "  Spectator,"  the  first 
number  being  published  on  the  20th  of 
March,  and  others  following  in  suc- 
cession on  the  Saturday  and  Tuesday 
of  each  week  till  its  conclusion  with 
the  two  hundred  and  eighth  number, 
on  the  14th  of  March,  1752.  The 
work,  as  a  whole,  is  distinguished  from 
its  predecessors  in  this  lighter  school 
of  literature  by  its  prevailing  serious- 
ness. The  "  Rambler  "  is  for  the  most 
part  a  collection  of  lay  sermons  or 
moralities  not  unworthy  of  the  pulpit ; 
for  Johnson  was  quite  capable  of  this 
part  of  the  office  of  a  clergyman,  and 
many  a  sermon  was  preached  in  Eng 
land  which  he  had  furnished  to  thu 
cloth  at  a  guinea  a  piece.  Among  his 
pri\  ate  prayers  and  meditations  wThich 
escaped  destruction  at  his  hands,  is  a 
solemn  invocation  of  divine  support  at 


SAMUEL  JOHNSON. 


19 


his  entrance  on  this  work ;  and  the  as- 
piration to  do  something  for  the  glory 
of  God  and  the  good  of  man  was  never 
lost  s^'ght  of  by  him  in  its  progress. 
With  the  exception  of  two  numbers 
by  Ms  learned  friend  Mrs.  Carter,  and 
feome  three  or  four  trifling  communi- 
cations, it  was  entirely  written  by  him. 
The  numbers  were  published  at  two- 
pence, and  Johnson  received  two  gui- 
neas for  each.  Though  compared  with 
the  "  Spectator,"  there  is  a  certain  heavi- 
ness in  the  style,  and  the  thoughts  are 
often  of  a  sombre  cast;  yet  to  an  in- 
telligent and  sympathizing  reader,  who 
has  seen  enough  of  life  to  value  it  at 
its  true  worth,  these  essays  may  still  be 
read  with  much  of  that  admiration 
which  they  awakened  in  their  author's 
own  period.  Their  object  is  essentially 
self-knowledge,  and  it  is  imparted  from 
the  author's  experience  with  the  wis- 
dom of  a  philosopher  and  the  familiar 
kindness  of  an  intimate.  Like  Chau- 
cer's "  Clerk  of  Oxenforde," 

' '  Sounding  in  moral  virtue  was  his  speech, 
And  gladly  would  he  learn,  and  gladly  teach." 

The  "Rambler"  is  not  a  book  to  be 
opened  in  a  careless  moment,  for  the 
style  is  out  of  fashion ;  but  it  requires  a 
reader  of  little  sagacity  to  penetrate 
to  its  profound  stores  of  thought  and 
feeling;  and  as  he  pursues  his  way 
through  apologues  and  allegories,  he 
will  be  rewarded  by  many  delightful 
sketches  of  character,  enlivened  by  jest 
and  humor. 

The  same  week  in  which  the  "  Ram- 
bler" was  brought  to  an  end,  Johnson 
was  called  upon  to  mourn  the  loss  of 
his  wife,  his  beloved  "  Tetty,"  who  had 
been  with  him,  his  consoler  and  friend, 


through  nearly  sixteen  years  of  priva- 
tion and  struggle.  She  lived  to  see  the 
establishment  of  his  reputation  as  one 
of  the  foremost  poets  and  prose  writers 
of  his  time.  He  had  greatly  relied  on 
her  approval  of  the  early  numbers  of 
the  "Rambler."  "  I  thought  very  well 
of  you  before,"  said  she,  "but  I  did 
not  imagine  you  could  have  written 
anything  equal  to  this ;"  and  Johnson 
treasured  the  observation  with  the 
warmth  of  a  lover.  When  he  resumed 
his  work  after  her  death,  he  chose  a 
particular  room  in  the  garret  to  write  it, 
because  he  had  never  seen  her  in  that 
place,  and  the  rest  of  the  house  was  in 
supportable  to  him.  To  the  end  of  his 
days  he  kept  the  anniversary  of  her 
death  with  devout  religious  exercises. 
Though  he  had  closed  the  "Ram- 
bler," sick  at  heart  with  the  burden  of 
his  private  sorrows,  the  essay  was  a 
form  of  literature  too  well  suited  to  his 
mental  habits  to  be  long  abandoned. 
Accordingly,  we  find  him  in  the 
spring  of  1753,  while  he  was  still  la- 
boring on  the  Dictionary,  engaging  in 
furnishing  various  papers  to  the  "  Ad- 
venturer," a  new  periodical  of  the  old 
"Spectator"  fashion,  conducted  by  his 
friend  Dr.  Hawkesworth.  In  this  and 
the  following  year  he  wrote  twenty- 
nine  numbers  of  that  work,  which  is 
chiefly  remembered  by  his  participa- 
tion in  it.  The  topics  upon  which  he 
mainly  relied  were  those  of  literature 
and  philosophy  in  its  application  to 
every -day  life,  for  he  constantly  held, 
with  Milton's  "  Adam,"  in  his  discourse 
with  the  angel  Raphael : 

"  That  not  to  know  at  large  of  things  remote 
From  use,  obscure  and  subtle,  but  to  know 
That  which  before  us  lies  in  daily  life 
Is  the  prime  wisdom." 


SAMUEL  JOHKSON. 


Following  the  production  of  the 
Dictionary,  after  an  interval,  in  which 
he  was  engaged  upon  the  "Literary 
Magazine,"  for  which  he  wrote  chiefly 
reviews  of  books,  he  again  resumed, 
in  April,  1758,  the  now  classic  style  of 
the  Essayists,  in  "The  Idler,"  con- 
ducted wholly  by  himself,  in  a  weekly 
series  continued  for  two  years.  These 
papers  were  not  published  on  a  sepa- 
rate sheet  like  the  "Rambler,"  but 
originally  appeared  in  a  weekly  news- 
paper called  "The  Universal  Chroni- 
cle." Twelve  of  the  hundred  and 
three  were  contributed  by  Johnson's 
friends;  the  rest  were  from  his  own 
pen.  Their  general  character  ranks 
them  with  their  predecessors  in  the 
"  Rambler  "  and  "  Adventurer  ; "  but 
they  are  of  a  lighter  cast,  with  more 
of  variety  in  the  treatment  than  the 
former.  The  style,  too,  is  more  easy 
and  idiomatic;  for  Johnson,  as  he 
mingled  with  the  world,  threw  more 
of  the  charm  of  his  familiar  conver- 
sation into  his  writings. 

While  the  "  Idler  "  was  in  progress, 
Johnson,  in  the  spring  of  1759,  pub- 
lished 'his  romance  "  The  History  of 
Rasselas,  Prince  of  Abyssinia,"  the 
locality  doubtless  a  reminiscence  of 
the  travels  of  Father  Lobo,  which  he 
had  translated.  Like  others  of  his 
best  writings  it  was  written  with  great 
rapidity,  being  composed  in  the  even- 
ings of  a  single  week,  the  motive  of 
this  exertion  being  to  procure  a  sum 
sufficient  to  pay  the  expenses  of  his 
mother's  funeral  and  some  small  debts 
left  by  her.  She  had.  continued  to 
reside  at  Lichfield,  and  had  reached 
the  venerable  age  of  ninety.  Johnson 
had  constantly  contributed  to  her  sup- 


port, and  her  last  days  were  uheered 
by  his  heartfelt  correspondence.  Ras 
selas  is  a  collection  of  philosophic  re- 
flections on  the  aspirations  and  disap- 
pointments set  in  a  slender  framework 
of  narrative  and  description.  The 
ideas  suggested  by  the  scenery  and 
characters,  however,  cover  any  defects 
or  inconsistencies  of  detail.  The  con- 
ception of  a  happy  valley  is  pleasing 
to  the  imagination,  and  the  dialogue 
is  supported,  not  by  any  dramatic  in- 
terest, but  by  a  certain  melancholy 
grace  in  the  sentiment.  The  adven- 
tures in  the  world  are  of  a  general 
character,  and  used  only  for  the  pur- 
pose of  introducing  the  reflections. 
The  moral  of  the  whole,  the  vanity  of 
all  things  human,  is  indicated  in  the 
opening  sentence  of  the  book,  a  kind 
of  musical  incantation  to  which  the 
rest  responds :  "  Ye,  who  listen  with 
credulity  to  the  whispers  of  fancy,  and 
pursue  with  eagerness  the  phantoms  of 
hope ;  who  expect  that  age  will  per- 
form the  promises  of  youth,  and  that 
the  deficiencies  of  the  present  day  will 
be  supplied  by  the  morrow ;  attend  to 
the  history  of  Rasselas,  Prince  of 
Abyssinia."  It  is  the  old  moral,  since 
the  days  of  Solomon ;  but  it  is  gently 
touched,  and  its  tone  of  disappoint- 
ment never  runs  into  the  language  of 
despair;  and  as  we  close  the  book  we 
feel  that  the  shadows  cast  over  the 
scene  are  from  the  mountain  heights 
of  a  higher  existence  beyond.  The 
last  thoughts  of  the  volume  are  given  to 
the  charms  of  knowledge  and  the  solace 
of  immortality.  For  this  work  Johnson 
received  from  his  publishers  a  hundred 
pounds,  to  which  they  added  twenty 
five  on  its  reaching  a  second  edition. 


SAMUEL  JOHNSON. 


The  next  incident  of  importance  in 
Johnson's  life,  which  affected  his  whole 
future  career,  was  his  acceptance  of  a 
pension  from  George  III.  in  1762, 
shortly  after  his  coming  to  the  throne. 
The  amount  was  three  hundred  pounds, 
sufficient  with  Johnson's  moderate 
wants  to  provide  for  his  comfort  and 
support  his  independence,  for  which 
the  resources  of  his  writings  had  not 
always  proved  adequate.  A  few  years 
before  he  had  been  arrested  for  a  debt 
of  less  than  six  pounds,  and  had  escaped 
a  temporary  lodgement  in  a  debtor's 
prison  by  the  friendly  aid  of  Richard- 
son the  novelist.  Some  surprise  might 
have  been  caused  by  Johnson  receiving 
a  pension  at  all ;  for,  with  his  Jacobite 
tendencies,  he  had  shown  but  little  con- 
sideration for  the  house  of  Hanover; 
but  the  new  reign  offered  an  oppor- 
tunity for  the  fusion  of  parties.  Bute, 
the  prime  minister,  was  a  Tory,  and  the 
recognition  of  Johnson's  services  to 
literature  and  morality  was  sure  to 
be  approved  by  the  persons  in  the  na- 
tion whose  good  opinion  was  best 
worth  having.  The  annuity  was  thus 
conferred  without  pledges  or  condi- 
tions, simply  as  an  honor  paid  to  lite- 
rature and  personal  worth.  In  this 
spirit  it  was  received  by  Johnson,  who 
could  afford  to  smile  while  his  detract- 
ors quoted  his  definitions  of  pension 
and  pensioner  in  the  Dictionary.  "  The 
event,"  as  Macaulay  has  observed, 
"  produced  a  change  in  Johnson's  whole 
way  of  life.  For  the  first  time  since 
his  boyhood,  he  no  longer  felt  the 
daily  goad  urging  him  to  the  daily 
toil.  He  was  at  liberty,  after  thirty 
years  of  anxiety  and  drudgery,  to  in- 
dulge his  constitutional  indolence,  to 


lie  in  bed  till  two  in  the  afternoon, 
and  to  sit  up  talking  till  four  in  the 
morning  without  fearing  either  the 
printer's  devil  or  the  sheriff's  officer.'* 
From  that  moment,  indeed,  he  ap 
peared  almost  exclusively  before  the 
world  as  a  man  of  leisure  and  society. 
He  was  at  the  age  of  fifty-three,  a  time 
of  life  when  men  of  toil  long  for  some 
enjoyment  of  the  fruits  of  their  labors, 
and  Johnson's  had  been  emphatically 
a  life  of  care  and  anxiety.  "  How  hast 
thou  purchased  this  experience  ? "  says 
the  fantastical  Spaniard  in  Shakespeare 
to  his  knowing  attendant,  Moth.  "  By 
my  penny  of  observation."  If  such 
gifts  could  be  estimated  in  coin,  John- 
son had  expended  a  fortune  in  the  ac- 
quisition. He  had  been  brought  by 
his  poverty,  in  a  hard  struggle  for  ex- 
istence, into  close  contact  with  the 
realities,  where  dangers  were  at  every 
step  to  be  avoided,  and  where  character 
was  in  constant  risk  of  suffering  ship- 
wreck. A  high  sense  of  duty  and  a 
morbid  conscientiousness  had  pre- 
served his  integrity,  while  he  was  de- 
licately sensitive  to  every  shade  of 
good  or  evil.  A  quarter  of  a  century 
had  passed  since  he  first  went  up  to 
London  with  Garrick, — years  filled 
with  thought  and  painful  effort,  the 
study  of  men  and  of  books  in  depart 
ments  of  life  and  learning  where  both 
were  at  their  highest  intensity;  and 
he  had  been  almost  daily  called  to 
turn  the  lessons  to  account  in  some  en- 
during form  of  literary  composition — 
essays  filled  with  knowledge  of  the 
world  and  animated  by  philosophy 
like  those  of  the  "Rambler;"  imagi 
native  tales  like  "Rasselas;"  biogra 
phies  like  that  of  Savage,  and  poetry 


SAMUEL  JOHNSON. 


still  leaning  upon  actual  life  and  his- 
tory, as  in  "The  Vanity  of  Human 
Wishes."  If,  like  his  prototype,  Ben 
Jonson,  he  had  been  gifted  with  the 
power  to  write  dramas,  the  circle  of 
his  experience  and  attainments  would 
have  been  complete ;  and  still  a  vast 
deal  of  what  Ben  put  into  his  plays 
or  its  equivalent  may  be  found  in  the 
Essays  of  Johnson. 

With  this  fullness  and  ripeness  of 
acquisition  and  development,  having 
proved  his  powers  before*  the  world  in 
writings,  the  great  merit  of  which  was 
universally  acknowledged,  Johnson 
now  enters  upon  a  new  stage  of  exist- 
ence, in  which  he  supports  a  peculiar 
character  unique  in  English  social  his- 
tory. This  was  the  part,  above  all 
others,  of  the  great  talker  of  his  time. 
It  is  not  so  much,  after  this,  what 
Johnson  writes  as  what  he  says,  that 
engages  the  attention  of  his  readers. 
For  the  remaining  twenty  years  of  his 
life,  he  is  to  be  known  chiefly  by  his 
conversational  talent,  and  for  our  ap- 
preciation of  this,  we  are  indebted  to 
a  person  as  singular  as  himself.  Of 
the  eight  volumes  which  compose  the 
standard  edition  of  "  Boswell's  John- 
son," six  are  taken  up  with  the  reports 
of  these  conversations.  It  would  be 
vain  to  attempt  within  our  present 
limits  to  describe  them.  They  exhibit 
various  shades  of  opinion  on  almost 
every  subject,  moral,  social,  literary,  po- 
litical, which  entered  into  the  thoughts 

*  O 

of  the  age ;  for  they  were  held  with  its 
representative  men,  its  divines,  its 
statesmen,  authors,  men  of  fashion,  and 
a  herd  of  others  less  distinguished,  who 
sought  to  light  their  tapers  at  that 
ibundant  flame.  Sometimes,  indeed, 


Johnson  talked  for  effect,  or  rathei 
risked  the  appearance  of  it  to  dra\v 
out  all  that  could  be  said  on  a  question 
he  was  occasionally  rude  and  repul 
sive ;  now  and  then,  prejudiced ;  but 
in  general,  he  appeared  the  great  mas- 
ter of  common  sense,  genial,  indulgent, 
tolerant ;  dogmatic  it  is  true,  but  with 
the  dogmatism  of  a  man  who  had  re- 
flected much,  and,  on  topics  of  moral 
interest,  was  not  to  be  lightly  shaker 
in  his  argument;  terse  and  pointed  iu 
his  expressions,  going  directly  to  the 
heart  of  the  matter  in  the  language  of 
everyday  life. 

For  a  result  like  this,  Johnson,  had 
he  foreseen  it,  might  have  sacrificed 
much  of  his  time  and  inclinations. 
But  Boswell  was  of  great  use  to  John- 
son in  many  ways,  and  spite  of  the 
great  diversity  in  their  characters  and 
tempers,  was  not  merely  tolerated  but 
grew  to  be  loved  by  him.  Much  has 
been  said  of  the  relation  between  them, 
and  some  wonder  has  been  expressed 
that  an  intimacy  should  exist  between 
a  man  of  such  mental  grandeur  and  sc 
weak  a  follower.  Perhaps  the  best 
solution  of  the  apparent  inconsist- 
ency may  be  found  in  the  remark  that 
Johnson  was  not  in  all  respects  so 
strong,  or  Boswell  so  weak  as  each  has 
been  represented.  A  character  so  lofty 
may  possibly  be  conceived  admitting 
of  no  associates  but  those  of  equal 
height  in  genius,  virtue  and  attain 
ments.  But  as  such  an  individual  sel 
dom,  if  ever,  exists,  the  personages  to 
compose  his  court  must  be  proportion 
ally  rare.  It  is  not  in  the  course  of 
ordinary  human  nature  to  meet  with 
such  select  associations.  It  is  a  motley 
world  we  live  in,  where  the  great  and 


SAMUEL  JOHNSON. 


23 


the  little  in  every  rank  and  quality  are 
freely  mingled  together.  Men  of  vir- 
tue and  men  of  intellect  are  everyday 
supporting  various  relations  with  oth- 
ers of  less  integrity  and  inferior  in- 
telligence. Nothing  is  more  common 
in  the  world  than  to  find  what  are 
called  great  men  surrounded  by  com- 
paratively little  men.  It  may  be,  as 
Pope  says,  that  "fools  rush  in  where 
angels  fear  to  tread;"  or  that  the 
crafty  and  designing  seek  to  ally  them- 
selves to  the  powerful  from  motives 
of  self-interest;  or  that  weakness  seeks 
strength  to  support  itself,  while  inde- 
pendent greatness  stands  aloof  from 
its  fellows.  Jealousy  is  easily  pro- 
voked among  equals,  so  that  like  does 
not  always  affect  like  in  the  practical 
conduct  of  life.  Greatness  needs  the 
presence  of  littleness  to  show  its  ele- 
vation. A  vast  deal  of  the  machinery 
of  greatness,  too,  must  be  worked  by 
inferiors.  Now,  Boswell  stood  in  va- 
rious necessary  relations  to  Johnson. 
In  the  matter  of  temperament — of  a 
sound  physical  constitution,  eager  for 
enjoyment,  pursuing  with  zest  the 
good,  and  alas  some  of  the  evil  things 
of  life — his  animal  spirits  were  a  cor- 
rective of  the  habitual  melancholy  of 
Johnson.  He  came  at  intervals  of  his 
busy  existence  to  cheer  the  lonely  sage 
with  gossip  of  the  world,  not  only  of 
London,  where  he  was  admitted  to  the 
best  society,  but  of  his  northern  home, 
and  of  the  continent  where  he  had 
visited  Voltaire,  and  become  intimate 
with  the  popular  hero  of  the  day  in 
a  is  island  fastness — the  patriotic  Paoli. 
There  was  no  better  reporter  of  the 
humors  of  men  than  Boswell,  and  no 
one,  so  easily  as  Johnson,  could  sift 


the  grain  of  wheat  from  his  absur- 
dities. "When  Johnson  was  in  com 
pany,  who  so  useful  as  Boswell  to 
divert  the  stream  of  conversation  into 
the  proper  channel  to  float  the  great 
Leviathan  of  the  deep?  He  was  aa 
necessary  to  the  chief  talker  of  the 
evening  as  the  inferior  clown  to  the 
master  joker  in  the  ring,  the  provoker 
and  victim  of  his  wit.  He  was  wil- 
ling to  suffer  anything  in  the  way  of 
'  rebuke  and  mortification,  that  his  ad- 
mired luminary  might  shine  with  the 
greater  lustre.  We  may  not  always 
respect  the  voluntary  slave,  but  we 
must  often  be  thankful  to  him  for 
what  he  accomplished,  when  his  im- 
pertinent nonsense  elicited  the  wisdom 
of  his  master.  How  was  the  fully 
charged  electrical  machine  to  display 
its  vigor  unless  an  obsequious  hand 
was  extended  to  receive  the  shock? 
What  Sancho  Panza  was  to  Don  Quix- 
ote, his  page  to  Falstaff,  his  squire  to 
Hudibras,  Boswell  was  to  Johnson. 

But  no  man  had  more  illustrious 
friends  than  Johnson;  and  Boswell, 
had  he  been" suddenly  carried  off  after 
that  first  unpromising  interview  in 
Davies'  back  parlor,  would  have  been 
a  greater  loss  to  posterity  than  to  him ; 
for  had  he  not  his  Club—"  The  Club  " 
—with  Garrick  and  Goldsmith,  Rey- 
nolds and  Burke,  and  a  host  of  asso- 
ciates worthy  of  their  society  for 
members ;  and  for  long  years  another 
home  of  his  own  in  the  hospitable 
mansion  of  his  friend  Thrale,  a  man 
of  wealth,  sympathizing  with  men  of 
letters,  where  also  he  found  a  still 
more  attractive  species  of  Boswell, 
spiced  with  the  piquant  humors  of 
her  sex,  in  the  fair  Mrs.  Thrale,  bet 


SAMUEL  JOHNSON. 


fcer  known  by  her  later  matrimonial 
designation,  Hester  Lynch  Piozzi.  As 
in  the  case  of  Boswell,  she  was  suffi- 
ciently distinguished  by  her  intellec- 
tual attainments  to  qualify  her  for  a 
partial  appreciation  of  the  greater 
mind  of  Johnson. 

We  must  now  pass  rapidly  over  the 
remaining  incidents  in  the  life  now 
hastening  to  its  close.  The  long-pro- 
mised edition  of  Shakspeare  was  pub- 
lished in  1765.  It  was  not  a  great 
achievement  in  critical  or  learned  illus- 
tration of  the  text;  but  it  is  memo- 
rable in  English  literature  for  its  noble 
preface,  in  which  Johnson,  forgetting 
the  limitations  of  his  own  poor  dra- 
matic talent  in  "  Irene,"  interprets  as 
no  one  ever  more  knowingly  and  feel- 
ingly interpreted,  the  transcendent  ge- 
nius of  the  author  whom  he  had  so 
eloquently  pictured  in  verse : — 

"  Each  change  of  many-colour'd  life  he  drew, 
Exhausted  worlds,  and  then  imagin'd  new; 
Existence  saw  him  spurn  her  bounded  reign, 
And  panting  Time  toil'd  after  him  in  vain." 

After  an  interval  of  ten  years  he 
published  "A  Journey  to  the  West- 
ern Islands  of  Scotland,"  an  account 
of  a  tour  which  he  had  made  with 
Boswell  in  the  autumn  of  1773.  He 
was  in  his  sixty-fourth  year,  in  the 
height  of  his  London  fame,  and  the  ex- 
cursion for  him  or  any  other  man  was 
then  considered  quite  an  extraordi- 
nary undertaking.  The  expedition 
had  been  talked  of  for  years.  In  1764, 
when  he  was  visiting  at  Ferney,  Bos- 
well had  mentioned  the  design  to  Vol- 
taire. "  He  looked  at  me,"  says  he, 
•'as  if  I  had  talked  of  going  to  the 
North  Pole,  and  said,  '  You  do  not  in- 
eist  on  my  accompanying  vou  3 '  '  No, 


sir.'  'Then  I  am  very  willing  you 
should  go.":  At  the  present  day  a 
great  deal  of  the  amusement  of  John 
son's  book  exists  in  the  air  of  impor 
tance  given  to  a  journey  which  is  gone 
through  with  every  season  by  hun- 
dreds of  cockney  tourists,  and  which, 
even  in  Johnson's  time,  had  no  more 
inconvenience  than  a  trifling  excur- 
sion to  the  Adirondacks,  or  other  par- 
tially settled  mountain  district  has 
now  in  our  own  country.  The  travel- 
ers started  together  in  August  from 
Edinburgh,  where  Johnson  joined 
Boswell,  pursued  their  way  along 
the  eastern  coast  of  Scotland  by  St. 
Andrews,  Dundee,  Aberdeen,  and  the 
region  bordering  the  Murray  Frith  to 
Inverness,  the  last  place  which  then, 
says  Johnson,  "had  a  regular  commu 
nication  by  high  roads  with  the  south- 
ern counties."  There  they  bade  adieu 
to  post-chaises  and  "mounted  their 
steeds,"  traversing  the  rock-hewn  road 
by  the  side  of  Lough  Ness  to  ita 
southern  extremity,  whence  they  cross- 
ed the  Highland  region,  a  simple  two 
days'  journey,  to  the  western  coast, 
coming  out  at  Glenelg,  opposite  the 
Isle  of  Sky.  This  and  the  adjacent 
Island  of  Raasay  were  pretty  tho- 
roughly explored,  while  Johnson  was 
nobly  entertained  by  the  Macleods, 
the  hereditary  clansmen.  In  Sky  his 
Jacobite  predilections  were  gratified 
by  an  introduction  to  Flora,  Macdon- 
aid,  the  good  angel  of  the  Pretender 
after  the  rebellion  of  '45,  and  he  had 
the  sublime  satisfaction  of  sleeping  in 
the  very  bed  which  Charles  Edward 
had  passed  a  night  in,  when,  in  the 
disguise  of  her  female  attendant,  be 
had  been  conducted  by  his  fair  guar- 


SAMUEL  JOHNSON. 


25 


dian  to  the  spot.  "  I  would  have  given 
a  good  deal."  said  Johnson  the  next 
morning  at  breakfast,  "rather  than 
riot  have  lain  in  that  bed."  So  Bos- 
weJl  tells  us  in  his  fuller  account  of 
the  tour,  which  admirably  supple- 
ments the  more  staid  narrative  of 
Johnson.  Both  accounts  are  admi- 
rable in  their  way.  Johnson  gives  a 
philosopher's  account  of  the  High- 
landers ;  but  if  any  one  desires  to  see 
what  the  journey  really  was,  and  how 
the  great  Leviathan  conducted  him- 
self under  the  novel  circumstances,  he 
must  read  the  report  of  it  by  Bos- 
well.  Without  crossing  to  the  more 
remote  of  the  Hebrides,  "far  amid 
the  melancholy  main,"  the  travellers 
took  a  southerly  course  from  Sky, 
visited  Mull  and  lona, — at  the  men- 
tion of  which  Johnson's  style  expands 
in  an  expression  of  the  loftiest  patriot- 
ism— and  at  the  end  of  October  were 
again  on  the  mainland  in  retreat  to 
London. 

The  same  year  that  Johnson  pub- 
lished his  account  of  this  journey,  the 
rising  war  with  the  Colonies  being  then 
the  topic  of  the  day,  he  wrote  a  pam- 
phlet, of  some  interest  historically  to 
American  readers,  entitled  "Taxation 
no  Tyranny."  Though  well  constructed 
in  point  of  style,  it  is  generally  ad- 
mitted to  have  done  the  author  little 
credit  by  its  constitutional  principles, 
his  main  consideration  being  that  the 
colonists  should  be  content  with  their 
position,  as  they  enjoyed  a  similar 
"virtual  representation"  to  that  of 
the  greater  part  of  Englishmen,  whom 
he  admitted,  without  any  desire  or 
suspicion  of  reform,  were  not  direct!  y 
represented  at  all.  He  was  old  and 
4 


conservative,  and  planted  himself  firm 
ly  on  the  established  order  of  things 
as  if  commercial  tyranny  and  parlia- 
mentary  restraint  could  go  on  for  ever 
When  he  speaks  of  the  suppression  of 
the  revolt,  it  is  in  the  terms  of  one 
conscious  of  superior  force,  who  had 
but  to  will  to  execute.  It  would  be 
humanity,  he  thought,  to  put  a  suffi- 
cient army  in  the  field  to  "  take  away 
not  only  the  power  but  the  hope  of 
resistance,  and  by  conquering  without 
a  battle,  save  many  from  the  sword." 
Bancroft,  contrasting  the  suffering,  in 
early  privations,  which  Johnson  had 
escaped,  with  that  which  he  would  in- 
flict, charges  him  with  "  echoing  to  the 
crowd  the  haughty  rancor,  which  pass- 
ed down  from  the  king  and  his  court 
to  his  council,  to  the  ministers,  to  the 
aristocracy,  their  parasites  and  follow- 
ers, with  nothing  remarkable  in  hia 
party  zeal,  but  the  intensity  of  its 
bitterness ;  or  in  his  manner,  but  its 
unparalleled  insolence ;  or  in  his  argu- 
ment, but  its  grotesque  extravagance." 
Another  literary  work  yet  remained 
to  Johnson,  one  worthy  of  his  pen  and 
in  which  he  gathered  the  ripest  fruita 
of  his  critical  studies  and  his  personal 
association  with  men  of  letters.  Tow 
ards  the  close  of  1777,  an  association 
of  the  London  booksellers  resolved 
upon  the  publication  of  an  extensive 
collection  of  the  English  poets,  with 
brief  preliminary  biographies,  to  be 
obtained,  if  possible,  from  the  pen  of 
Johnson.  He  readily  entered  into  the 
plan,  naming  two  hundred  guineas  for 
his  work,  which  was  acceded  to.  At 
the  outset  his  purpose  was  to  give  only 
a  few  dates,  with  a  short  general  charac- 
ter of  each  poet ;  but  as  he  warmed 


SAMUEL  JOHN  SOX. 


in  the  execution,  the  design  was  ex- 
panded, especially  in  the  more  im- 
portant subjects,  into  the  full  bio- 
graphies and  elaborate  critical  and 
philosophical  discussions  which  ren- 
der the  series  in  the  estimate  of  Bos- 
well,  generally  admitted  by  the  read- 
ing world,  "the  richest,  most  beautiful, 
and,  indeed,  most  perfect  production 
of  Johnson's  pen."  Exceptions  may 
be  taken  to  particular  opinions,  to  the 
political  prejudices  in  the  case  of  Mil- 
ton, and  his  singular  want  of  appre- 
ciation of  the  poetical  powers  of  Gray, 
some  of  whose  finest  verses  he  treats 
with  the  levity  and  ignorance  of  a 
pert  school-boy ;  but  upon  the  whole, 
especially  where  the  topics  fall  within 
the  range  of  common  life,  where  oppor- 
tunity is  afforded  for  sympathy  with 
humanity,  the  great  test  of  biographic 
excellence,  the  "  Lives  "  may  be  read 
with  admiration  and  delight.  In  the 
style  Johnson  is  at  his  best.  As  he 
grew  older,  his  mind  seems  to  have 
worked  itself  clear  of  its  early  incum- 
brances.  We  no  longer  meet  with  the 
artificial  mannered  tone  of  the  "  Ram- 
bler." He  was  full  of  his  subject,  and 
enters  upon  the  narration  with  the 
ease  of  conversation.  There  is  no  other 
book  in  the  English  language  equally 
great,  it  has  been  observed,  produced 
between  the  age  of  sixty-eight  and 
seventy-two.  It  was  the  last  harvest 
of  the  author's  genius;  and  the  work 
is  marked  on  many  a  page  with  the 
most  touching  expressions  of  feeling. 
In  writing  the  lives  of  others  he  was 
portraying  his  own. 
The  career  was  soon  to  be  brought 

O 

to  a  close.      Some  of  the  most  illus- 
trious of  his  friends  were  preceding 


him  to  the  grave.  Goldsmith  died  ix 
1774,  Garrick  in  1779,  and  Thrale  was 
called  away,  the  greatest  affliction  of 
the  kind  which  could  have  befallen 
him,  for  it  deprived  him  of  a  home,  in 
1781.  In  the  year  following,  his  own 
household  was  invaded,  in  the  death 
of  Robert  Levett,  a  humble  physician 
of  the  lower  classes,  to  whom,  with  the 
blind  Miss  Williams,  another  unhappy 
victim  of  poverty,  Mrs.  Demoulins, 
and  yet  other  nondescripts,  agreeing 
in  nothing  but  their  common  misery, 
he  had  charitably  given  a  home.  The 
inmates  were  constantly  annoying  him 
with  their  quarrels  ;  but  even  this  dis- 
turbance had  become  a  kind  of  relief 
to  his  loneliness.  In  a  copy  of  verses 
of  singular  feeling,  he  paid  a  tribute 
to  the  lowly  worth  of  Levett,  which 
will  outlive  many  compliments  to  the 
great  who  in  their  life-time  would  have 
looked  down  with  contempt  upon  their 
subject. 

Compare  the  treatment  of  the  noble 
Chesterfield  with  that  of  the  insig- 
nificant Levett,  and  you  may  take  the 
measure  of  Johnson's  pride  and  hu- 
mility, honest  virtues  both,  one  sup- 
jporting  the  other.  There  was  some- 
thing heroic  in  the  magnanimity  of 
Johnson  towards  the  poor  and  suffer- 
ing. The  incident  will,  while  his  name 
last",  never  be  forgotten,  of  his  bearing 
home  with  him  on  his  back,  through 
Fleet  street,  a  poor  victim  of  disease 
and  ignominy,  which  Hazlitt,  in  one 
of  his  lectures  to  a  London  audience, 
pronounced  "  an  act  worthy  of  the 
good  Samaritan." 

In  the  summer  before  he  died,  in 
August,  1774,  Dr.  Johnson  paid  hia 
last  visit  to  his  old  home  at  LichfielcL 


SAMUEL   JOHNSON. 


While  there,  lie  narrated  to  a  young 
slergyman  attached  to  the  cathedral, 
an  incident  of  his  life,  one  of  the  most 
touching  and  pathetic  in  all  biography. 
He  recalled  how  in  the  closing  years 
of  his  father's  life,  more  than  fifty  years 
before,  he  had  been  guilty  of  a  single 
act  of  disobedience,  refusing  on  a  par- 
ticular occasion  through  pride  to  at- 
tend him  at  one  of  his  petty  sales  of 
his  stock  at  Uttoxeter  market.     His 
father  went  alone,  but  long  after  he 
was  dead,  Johnson  often  accompanied 
him  there  in  imagination.     At  last,  a 
few  years  before  his  death,  desiring  to 
atone  for  his  fault,  he  resolved  upon 
an  extraordinary  act  of  humiliation. 
He  went  to  the  very  spot  where  his 
father  had  been  accustomed  to  keep 
his  stand  in  the  market-place  at  Ut- 
toxeter, and  stood  there  a  considerable 
time  bare-headed   in  the   rain.      "In 
contrition,"  he  said,  "I  "stood,  and  I 
hope  the  penance  was  expiatory." 

After  this,  there  remains  for  us  but 
to  state  the  departure  of  this  pious 
penitent.  His  health  was  gradually 
failing  him.  In  the  summer  of  1784, 
having  previously  suffered  from  an  at- 
tack of  paralysis  from  which  he  had 
recovered,  he  felt  his  feebleness  in- 
creasing, and  had  some  thought  of  es- 
caping the  severities  of  the  coming  win- 
ter by  a  visit  to  Italy,  which  was  aban- 


doned for  lack  of  means.  His  menta. 
strength  remained,  meanwhile,  unim 
paired.  While  in  the  country,  in  Oc- 
tober, he  translated  an  ode  of  Horace, 
in  which  the  poet  moralizes  on  the 
lessons  of  mortality  in  the  changing 
-seasons : 

"  Who  knows  if  Jove,  who  counts  our  score, 
Will  toss  us  in  a  morning  more  ?" 

But  few  were  now  left.  Returning 
to  London  in  the  middle  of  Novem- 
ber he  became  more  seriously  ill,  his 
thoughts  reverting  to  his  departed 
friends  .and  solaced  with  the  comforts 
of  religion,  while  the  cheerful  activity 
of  his  mind  was  shown  during  his 
sleepless  nights  in  translating  the 
Greek  epigrams  of  the  Anthologia  into 
Latin  verse.  When  the  last  hour 
came  he  met  it  with  thorough  equa- 
nimity, fully  conscious  of  the  event, 
counting  the  thin  falling  sands  of  life. 
His  last  words  to  the  daughter  of  a 
friend  who  came  to  visit  him  were, 
"  God  bless  you,  my  dear."  And  so 
in  his  old  home  in  Bolt  Court,  within 
the  sound  of  his  beloved  Fleet  Street, 
on  the  thirteenth  of  December,  1784, 
Johnson  expired.  On  the  twentieth 
his  remains  were  laid  in  Westminstei 
Abbey  by  the  side  of  his  friend  Gar- 
rick.  Their  pilgrimage  to  London  was 
ended. 


OLIVER     GOLDSMITH. 


'TIHE  family  of  Goldsmith,  of  Eng- 
-*-  lish  origin  and  on  the  Protestant 
side,  had  been  long  settled  in  Ireland 
and  furnished  various  clergymen  in  dif- 
ferent offices  to  its  established  church, 
when  Oliver,  the  subject  of  this  notice, 
*ras  born  at  Pallas,  in  the  County  of 
^ongford,  on  the  10th  of  November, 
1728.  His  father,  the  Rev.  Charles 
Goldsmith,  was  rector  of  the  parish, 
married  to  the  daughter  of  the  head- 
master of  the  diocesan  school  at  El- 
phin,  which  he  had  attended,  and  at 
the  time  of  Oliver's  birth  was  the  par- 
ent of  three  children,  struggling  to 
maintain  a  decent  position  in  the  world 
on  an  income,  all  told,  of  forty  pounds 
a  year — an  average  sum  in  the  remu- 
neration of  poor  curates  which  has 
passed  from  the  poet's  verse  into  a 
speoies  of  proverb.  The  picture  of  the 
clergyman  drawn  by  Goldsmith  in  the 
"  Deserted  Village  "  has  been  generally 
supposed  to  refer  to  his  father,  and  it 
exhibits  in  enduring  colors  the  simple 
virtues  of  the  man  and  the  home  into 
which  the  poet  was  born.  Many  traits 
of  Charles  Goldsmith's  amiable  dispo- 
sition are  again  reflected  in  the  "  Vicar  " 
of  Wakefield,  ancl  his  portrait  was  also 

(38) 


drawn  by  his  son  in  the  sketch  of  tkt 
father  of  the  "  Man  in  Black,"  in  the 
Citizen  of  the  World. 

Oliver's  first  instructor,  the  village 
schoolmistress,  dame  Delap,who  taught 
him  his  letters,  reported  him  the  dull- 
est of  boys  and  "  impenetrably  stupid ;" 
and  when,  at  the  age  of  six,  he  fell  into 
the  hands  of  a  male  preceptor,  Thomas 
Byrne,  a  somewhat  vagrant  character, 
he  acquired  more  of  his  unsettled  hu- 
mors and  fondness  for  music  than  of 
any  book  learning  he  may  have  pos- 
sessed. It  is  said  that  at  this  time  his 
mind  became  well  stored  with  the 
ballad  lore  and  superstitions  of  the 
peasantry — incentives  to  his  imagina- 
tion and  lessons  in  story-telling.  The 
family  were  now  at  Lissoy,  not  far  from 
Pallas,  in  considerably  improved  cir 
cumstances,  the  poor  pastor  having 
succeeded  to  a  better  living  at  that 
place.  While  at  school  there,  Olivei 
was  visited  by  a  severe  attack  of  small- 
pox, which  left  its  marks  permanently 
on  his  countenance,  adding  to  the  em- 
barrassment of  a  somewhat  heavily 
built,  ungainly  figure.  From  the  aca- 
demy at  Lissoy  he  was  sent  to  a  su- 
perior school  kept  by  the  Rev.  Mr 


OLIVER  GOLDSMITH. 


29 


Griffin,  at  Elphin,  where  one  of  his 
uncles  resided.  There,  amidst  the 
jeers  of  his  companions  at  his  clumsi- 
ness and  stupidity,  he  made  some  ac- 
quaintance with  Ovid  and  Horace,  and 
was  thus  led  into  that  pathway  of  the 
muses,  which,  spite  of  all  prognostica- 
tions, no  one  of  his  generation  was  to 
pursue  to  greater  advantage.  There 
was  time  enough  before  him  yet,  for 
he  was  now  only  in  his  ninth  year,  and 
there  were  soon  indications  that  he  was 
to  be  something  more  than  the  butt  of 
his  ill-mannered  associates.  One  day 
at  his  uncle's  at  Elphin  there  was  a 
little  dance,  when  Oliver,  in  the  gay- 
ety  of  his  spirits  ventured  a  pas  seul 
on  the  floor.  "  Ah  ! "  says  the  fiddler, 
"  ^Esop !"  upon  which  the  boy,  stopping 
in  his  hornpipe,  turned  the  laugh  upon 
his  assailant  in  his  first  recorded  coup- 
let: 

"  Heralds  !  proclaim  aloud  !  all  saying, 
See  2Esop  dancing,  and  his  monkey  playing." 

Thus,  this  first  trifling  display  of  his 
poetic  talent  recalls  the  last  brilliant 
effort  of  his  muse  published  after  his 
death,  "Retaliation."  From  the  cra- 
dle to  the  grave,  it  was  the  fortune  of 
the  good-humored  Goldsmith  to  be 
constantly  thrown  upon  the  defensive. 

After  a  year  or  two  with  Mr.  Griffin, 
Goldsmith  passed  to  the  hands  of  an- 
other clerical  instructor,  Mr.  Campbell, 
at  Athlone ;  thence,  in  his  thirteenth 
year,  to  another  reverend  gentleman, 
Mr.  Hughes,  at  Edgeworthstown,  with 
whom,  at  the  age  of  sixteen,  he  con- 
cluded his  school  studies.  On  leaving 
home  at  the  close  of  his  last  holiday, 
he  met  with  an  adventure  of  an  amus- 
ing character.  A  month  in  the  life  of 
Goldsmith,  it  may  be  remarked,  would 


have  been  nothing  without  its  adven 
ture ;  and  of  all  places  in  the  world 
for  an  adventure,  Ireland,  with  its  rol- 
licking ways  of  life,  was.  in  his  days, 
the  readiest  to  furnish  one.  Setting 
out  from  Ballymahon,  where  his  friends 
-had  provided  him  with  a  horse  and  a 
guinea,  on  his  way  to  Edgeworthstown, 
he  found  himself  at  night  half-way  on 
his  journey,  in  the  town  of  Ardagh. 
Falling  in  with  a  notorious  wag,  one 
Kelly,  and  conscious  of  the  unaccus- 
tomed presence  of  the  guinea  in  his 
pocket,  with  something  of  an  air  of 
importance,  we  may  suppose,  enquiring 
for  an  inn,  he  was  directed  to  the  house 
of  a  gentleman  of  the  place,  named 
Featherstone.  Mistaken  by  the  ser- 
vants for  an  expected  guest,  his  horse 
was  taken  care  of  according  to  his  di- 
rection by  the  servants,  and,  entering 
the  mansion,  he  stoutly  called  upon  the 
proprietor  for  a  liberal  supper,  order- 
ing wine  and  magnanimously  inviting 
the  wife  and  daughter  of  his  landlord 
to  join  him.  Mr.  Featherstone  saw 
the  mistake  and  humored  it,  enjoying 
the  style  of  the  young  student  with 
whose  father  he  had  been  acquainted 
at  college.  Parting  with  his  guest  at 
bed-time  he  received  an  order  for  a  hot 
cake  in  the  morning,  and  it  was  not 
till  breakfast  was  over  that  Goldsmith 
was  allowed  to  appreciate  the  jest 
which  had  been  played  upon  him.  In 
this  case,  however,  he  had  been  no 
loser;  nor  has  the  world  been  since, 
for  the  joke  furnished  him  with  the 
main  incident  in  his  comedy,  "She 
Stoops  to  Conquer,"  over  which  to  this 
day  many  thousands  of  persons  are 
every  season  enjoying  their  hearty 
laugh. 


30 


OLIVEK  GOLDSMITH. 


The  time  had  now  come  for  Oliver 
o  be  sent  to  college,  Trinity  College, 
Dublin,  where  his  elder  brother  Henry 
had  preceded  him,  entering  as  a  pen- 
sioner. Owing  to  an  exercise  of  false 
generosity  in  sacrificing  his  income  to 
portion  a  daughter  married  to  a  gen- 
tleman's son,  Goldsmith's  father  was 
unable  to  support  him  at  the  univer- 
sity in  the  same  comfortable  though  in- 
ferior rank.  Oliver  was  consequently 
thrown  upon  one  still  lower,  the  low- 
est grade  of  all,  that  of  sizer  or  servitor, 
which  gave  him  board  and  instruction 
free  of  expense,  with  a  small  charge 
for  his  room,  while  he  was  to  perform 
various  minor  duties  in  return,  of  which 
sweeping  the  courts  in  the  morning, 
carrying  the  dishes  from  the  kitchen  to 
the  table  of  the  Fellows  and  waiting 
in  the  hall  until  they  had  dined,  after 
which  he  might  dine  there  himself, 
were  among  the  number.  He  also  was 
entitled  or  compelled  to  wear  in  token 
of  his  servitude,  a  black  gowrn  of  coarse 
stuff  without  sleeves  with  a  distinctive 
red  cap.  For  such  privileges  a  higher 
degree  of  scholarship  was  expected  on 
entering  than  from  the  nobler  fellow 
commoners  who  paid  their  way  and 
were  dressed  in  more  gentlemanly  at- 
tire. The  sizers  were  generally  mature 
in  age  and  better  qualified  in  learning 
than  the  other  students.  Goldsmith, 
however,  was  still  young,  at  the  age  of 
seventeen.  In  the  account  of  the  de- 
linquencies of  his  youth  which  occupy 
BO  unseemly  a  proportion  of  his  biog- 
raphies, it  must  be  set  down  to  his 
credit  that  he  passed  his  rigorous  ex- 
amination successfully.  He  was,  how- 
ever, not  much  of  a  student  at  college. 
His  sensitive  nature  felt  all "  the  slings 


and  arrows"  daily  cast  upon  him  by 
the  "  outrageous  fortune  '  which  cf  i- 
demned  him  to  ignominious  servitude 
and  suffering,  in  a  seat  of  the  Muses, 
where  all  should  have  been  cheerful' 
sunshine;  and  he  was,  moreover,  con 
stantly  insulted  by  a  brutal  tutor,  a 
Mr.  Theaker  Wilder,  a  cold-blooded 
mathematician,  who  confounded  all 
moral  and  intellectual  qualities, "  think- 
ing he  was  witty  when  he  was  simply 
malicious,"  an  ugly  fellow  with  his 
spite  and  ignorance  to  handle  p<x>r 
Goldsmith  at  an  examination.  For, 
with  whatever  learning  he  may  have 
possessed,  he  was  profoundly  ignorant 
of  Goldsmith's  nature.  Long  after- 
wards, when  his  pupil  was  at  the  height 
of  his  fame,  this  unhappy  man  came 
to  a  violent  end,  being  found  dead  one 
morning  on  the  floor  of  his  room  with 
some  bruises  on  his  person,  a  disaster 
attributed  to  his  disreputable  mode  of 
living. 

While  Goldsmith  was  bearing  these 
inflictions  he  was  cast  more  deeply  into 
poverty  by  the  death  of  his  father,  in 
his  second  year  at  the  College,  when  the 
scanty  remittances  from  home  ceased, 
and  he  was  thrown  upon  casual  loans 
from  his  friends  to  supply  his  narrow  ne- 
cessities— not,,  however,  without  some 
assistance  from  his  own  genius.  He 
composed  street  ballads,  for  which  he 
found  a  ready  sale,  receiving  five  shil- 
lings for  each  from  a  bookseller  in  the 
city ;  and,  what  was  more  agreeable  to 
his  nature,  his  instinctive  pride  in  au- 
thorship was  gratified  by  listening  to 
them  at  night  as  they  were  sung  oy 
the  criers  in  the  streets — a  consolatory 
suggestion,  we  may  hope,  to  him  in 
the  midst  of  his  humiliations  of  tli» 


OLIVER   GOLDSMITH. 


31 


"  All  hail  hereafter ! "  There  were 
other  incidents,  too,  of  a  rougher  cha- 
racter, of  this  college  life.  Feuds  be- 
tween gownsmen  and  the  town  people 
were  not  uncommon  in  Dublin  in  the 
last  century.  A  riot  occurred,  in  which 
a  bailiff  who  had  arrested  a  student 
was  assailed,  the  peace  of  the  city  was 
disturbed, 'and  several  lives  lost  in  the 
tumult.  Goldsmith  was  not  a  ring- 
leader in  this  affair,  but  he  had  been 
out  with  the  rioters,  and  was  publicly 
admonished  for  favoring  the  tumult. 
To  redeem  his  character,  he  tried  the 
next  month  for  a  scholarship,  and  fail- 
ing in  this,  succeeded  in  gaining  a 
trifling  "Exhibition,"  worth  about 
thirty  shillings.  Characteristically 
enough,  he  celebrated  this  little  tri- 
umph by  a  dancing  party,  of  more 
frolic  than  expense,  in  his  upper  rooms, 
and  in  the  midst  of  the  hilarity  was 
confronted  by  his  savage  tutor  for 
his  infringement  of  the  rules.  The 
tutor  from  words  proceeded  to  vio- 
lence, and  Goldsmith  was  so  roughly 
and  ignominiously  handled,  Wilder, 
with  his  mathematical  attainments, 
being  a  redoubted  pugilist,  that 
Goldsmith,  stung  by  the  disgrace,  de- 
termined to  escape  from  the  College. 
Selling  his  books,  he  improvidently 
loitered  in  Dublin  till  his  stock  was 
reduced  to  a  shilling,  with  which  he 
set  out  for  Cork,  with  a  vague  inten- 
tion of  going  to  America.  The  shil- 
ling supported  him  for  three  days,  and 
when  the  proceeds  of  such  clothes  as  he 
had  to  sell  were  exhausted,  he  began  to 
feel  the  sufferings  of  hunger.  Late  in 
life  he  told  Reynolds  how,  after  fasting 
at  this  time  for  twenty-four  hours,  a 
handful  of  gray  peas,  given  him  by  a 


girl  at  a  wake,  was  the  most  delicious 
meal  he  had  ever  tasted.  Utterly  desti- 
tute, he  turned  homeward,  was  met  on 
his  way  by  his  brother  Henry,  who  re- 
lieved his  wants  and  accompanied  him 
back  to  College.  There  he  remained 
to  the  end  of  his  four  years'  course, 
taking  his  degree  of  Bachelor  of  Arts 
in  1749.  "The  popular  picture  of 
him  in  these  Dublin  University  days," 
writes  his  biographer,  Forster,  "  is  little 
more  than  of  a  slow,  hesitating,  some- 
what hollow  voice,  heard  seldom,  and 
always  to  great  disadvantage  in  the 
class-rooms ;  and  of  a  low-sized,  thick, 
robust,  ungainly  figure,  lounging  about 
.the  College  courts  in  the  wait  for 
misery  and  ill-luck."  Something,  doubt- 
less, is  to  be  added  to  this  notion  of 
Goldsmith  on  the  score  of  reading  and 
scholarship.  Though,  as  he  afterwards 
told  Malone  in  London,  "  I  made  no 
great  figure  at  the  University  in  mathe- 
matics, which  was  a  study  much  in  re- 
pute there,  I  could  turn  an  ode  of  Ho- 
race into  English  better  than  any  of 
them."  But  of  all  who  were  students 
at  the  University  during  his  service 
there,  certainly  he  appeared  the  least 
likely  to  be  enthroned  at  its  gate  in  a 
monumental  statue.  Yet  there  he  now 
stands,  in  the  exquisite  workmanship 
of  the  sculptor  Foley,  clad  in  his  habit 
as  he  lived,  his  right  hand,  falling  at 
ease,  holding  a  pen,  his  left  support- 
ing an  open  book,  his  countenance  re- 
flecting at  once  his  humor  and  intelli- 
gence— the  oppressed  servitor  of  1745 
— the  most  interesting  tradition  of  the 
University  a  century  afterwards. 

From  College  Goldsmith  returned 
home,  and  uncertain  as  to  his  pros- 
pects, with  no  settled  resolution,  passed 


32 


OLIVER    GOLDSMITH. 


three  years  in  a  desultory  mode  of 
living,  occasionally  visiting  Ms  brother 
Henry,  the  clergyman,  in  the  village 
school  at  Lissoy ;  and  what  was  more 
to  his  inclination,  freely  partaking  in 
the  junketings  and  frolics  of  the  care- 
les«  company  of  the  place.  As  the 
clerical  life  seemed  to  be  the  natural 
resource  of  the  family,  his  mother,  his 
brother-in-law,  Hodson,  for  whom  the 
elder  Goldsmith  had  made  the  sacrifice 
tn  the  matter  of  his  daughter's  dowry, 
and  his  uncle,  tlie  Rev.  Mr.  Contarine, 
who  was  often  visited  by  Goldsmith 
at  his  parsonage  in  Roscommon,  all 
united  in  urging  Oliver  to  take  holy 
orders.  The  advice  was  not  much  in 
accordance  with  his  habits  or  inclina- 
tions, but  he  accepted  it,  and  after  the 
necessary  interval,  presented  himself 
to  the  Bishop  of  Elphin  for  ordina- 
tion. Various  explanations  are  given 
of  his  rejection — one,  that  he  was  too 
young ;  another,  that  his  doubtful  re- 
cord at  College  had  preceded  him; 
another,  which  is  quite  probable,  that 
he  had  neglected  the  preliminary  stu- 
dies ;  and  yet  a  fourth,  that  his  dress 
stood  in  the  way,  particularly  a  most 
unclerical  pair  of  scarlet  breeches, 
which  he  wore  on  the  occasion. 

The  next  resource  for  Goldsmith  was 
provided  by  his  uncle  Contarine,  the 
only  one  of  the  family  who  seems  to 
have  had  much  faith  in  him,  or  done 
much  for  him.  He  obtained  him  the 
situation  of  tutor  or  companion  in  the 
family  of  a  gentleman  of  his  county 
named  Flinn,  which  lasted  for  a  year, 
when  it  was  broken  up  by  Goldsmith 
3harging  one  of  the  household  with 
unfair  play  at  the  card-table.  So  it 
must  have  been  upon  thp  whole  a 


rather  free-and-easy  sort  of  life  undei 
the  roof  of  Mr.  Flinn.  He  parted 
with  it  somehow  with  money  in  hia 
pocket,  thirty  pounds,  it  is  said,  and 
rode  away  with  a  good  horse  to  Cork, 
where,  a  second  time,  according  to  a 
letter  written  to  his  mother,  he  enter 
tained  the  idea  of  going  to  America. 
He  actually,  he  says,  paid  his  passage 
in  a  ship  bound  for  that  country,  but 
being  off  with  a  festive  party  in  the 
country  when  the  wind  provefl  favor- 
able, "  the  captain  never  inquired  after 
me,  but  set  sail  with  as  much  indiffer- 
ence as  if  I  had  been  on  board."  The 
generous  steed  with  which  he  set  out 
had  been  sold,  the  money  the  animal 
brought  had  been  spent,  and  the  thirty 
guineas  had  been  reduced  to  two,  the 
greater  part  of  which  was  expended 
upon  a  broken  down,  raw-boned  horse, 
to  which  "generous  beast"  ashe  styles  it, 
he  gave  the  name  of  Fiddleback.  Leav- 
ing Cork  for  home  on  the  back  of  this 
Rozinante,  with  five  shillings  in  hand, 
expecting  to  recruit  his  finances  from 
an  old  college  friend  on  the  road,  who 
had  often  expatiated  to  him  on  his  hos- 
pitality, he  parted  with  half  a  crown  to 
a  beggar  on  the  way,  and  in  this  impov- 
erished condition  reached  the  dwelling 
where  he  looked  for  relief.  His  account 
of  his  reception,  an  admirable  speci- 
men of  his  early  literary  talent,  recalls 
the  incidents  and  humor  of  the  pictu- 
resque Spanish  novels.  Indeed,  Laza- 
rillo  de  Tonnes  himself  might  have 
been  the  hero  of  his  adventure. 

Another  attempt  was  now  to  be 
made  in  one  of  the  professions,  and 
the  law  was  thought  of, — kind-hearted 
Uncle  Contarine,  whose  benevolence 
was  worthy  of  his  early  intimacy  with 


OLIYER  GOLDSMITH. 


33 


the  good  Bishop  Berkeley,  furnishing 
out  of  his  slender  clerical  revenue  fifty 
pounds  to  set  him  on  the  track.  He 
was  to  proceed  to  London  to  keep  the 
usual  terms;  but  got  no  further  than 
Dublin,  where  he  was  stripped  of  all 
his  money  at  the  gambling  table  by 
one  of  his  Irish  acquaintances.  This 
sent  him  back  to  his  home,  Uncle  Con- 
tarine  receiving  him  with  kindness.  A 
few  months  after,  at  the  suggestion  of 
another  relative,  the  chief  clerical  dig- 
nitary of  the  family,  Dean  Goldsmith, 
of  Cloyne,  the  third  and  last  of  the 
professions,  that  of  medicine  was  re- 
solved upon  and  Uncle  Contarine  again 
stepped  forward  to  furnish  the  pecu- 
niary outfit  for  Edinburgh,  where  the 
study  was  to  be  prosecuted  at  the  Uni- 
versity. Here  Goldsmith  remained  a 
year  and  a  half,  becoming  a  member 
of  its  Medical  Society  and  attending 
the  lectures,  particularly  admiring  the 
scope  and  ability  of  Munro,  the  pro- 
fessor of  anatomy.  He  found  pleasure 
in  his  studies,  in  a  letter  to  his  uncle, 
speaking  of  the  science  as  "  the  most 
pleasing  in  nature,  so  that  my  labors 
are  but  a  relaxation,  and,  I  may  truly 
say,  the  only  thing  here  that  gives  me 
pleasure."  There  is  a  hint  of  his  em- 
ployment, probably  as  a  tutor,  in  the 
family  of  the  Duke  of  Hamilton,  to  eke 
out  his  resources ;  but  the  remittances 
of  the  generous  Contarine,  though  lim- 
ited, were  sufficient  to  support  some 
indulgence  in  dress,  as  the  tailor's  bills 
yet  extant  indicate  in  their  items  of 
sky-blue  satin,  rich  Genoa  velvet  and 
high  claret-colored  cloth;  while  there 
was  something  left  to  undertake  a  visit 
to  the  Continent  to  perfect  his  medical 
studies  at  one  of  its  universities.  Paris 


was  resolved  upon  for  this  purpose, 
and  in  the  spring  of  1754,  Oliver  em- 
barked on  his  round-about  way  thither 
in  a  ship  to  Bordeaux.  But,  as  luck 
would  have  it,  the  vessel  was  driven 
by  a  storm  into  Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 
where  the  passengers  were  seized,  on 
the  charge  of  being  recruits  for  the 
French  service,  and  Goldsmith  with 
difficulty  procured  his  liberation  after  a 
fortnight's  imprisonment.  It  was  some 
consolation  afterwards  to  reflect  that 
had  he  been  allowed  to  proceed  with 
the  vessel  he  would  probably  have  been 
drowned  with  the  crew — shipwrecked 
at  the  mouth  of  the  Garonne.  Finding 
another  ship  ready  for  Holland,  he 
took  his  passage  for  Rotterdam,  arri- 
ved there  safely,  proceeded  to  Leyden, 
and  presently  reported  in  a  very  agree- 
able letter  to  his  Uncle  Contarine,  the 
state  of  medical  learning  at  its  Univer- 
sity, at  which  he  was  for  some  time  a 
student.  He  now  gained  some  sup- 
port as  a  teacher  of  his  native  language, 
in  which  we  may  suppose  he  fumed 
his  knowledge  of  French  to  account. 
Habitual  cheerfulness,  with  a  physical 
constitution  of  great  endurance,  en- 
abled him  to  support  a  life  of  make- 
shifts, which  to  a  less  courageous  tem- 
perament would  have  been  unendu- 
rable. Encouraged  by  the  example 
of  the  Baron  Holberg,  then  recently 
deceased,  who,  following  his  own  in- 
clinations in  a  career  of  adventure  had 
risen  by  his  exertions  from  a  youth  of 
poverty  to  the  highest  rank  in  the  lite- 
rature of  Denmark,  he  determined  to 
pursue  the  somewhat  vagrant  course 
which,  in  the  career  of  that  eminent 
man  had  preceded  his  acquisition  of 
fame  and  fortune.  As  Holberg's  story 


34 


OLIVER  GOLDSMITH. 


was  afterwards  told  by  Goldsmith 
himself,  "  without  money,  recommend- 
ations or  friends,  lie  undertook  to  set 
out  upon  his  travels,  and  make  the 
tour  of  Europe  on  foot.  A  good  voice 
and  a  trifling  skill  in  music  were  the 
only  finances  he  had  to  support  an  un- 
dertaking so  extensive ;  so  he  travelled 
by  day,  and  at  night  sang  at  the  doors 
of  peasant's  houses  to  get  himself  a 
lodging."*  The  exact  counterpart  of 
this  is  the  story  of  Goldsmith's  life  for 
the  year  1755.  Setting  out  in  Febru- 
ary, he  made  some  stay  at  Louvain,  in 
Flanders,  at  whose  University,  it  is  said, 
he  obtained  his  degree  of  Bachelor  of 
Medicine.  He  is  to  be  traced  at  Brus- 
sels and  Antwerp,  and  signally  at 
Paris  where  he  attended  the  chemical 
lectures  of  Rouelle,  admired  Mademoi- 
selle Clairon,  then  the  delight  of  the 
stage,  and,  as  we  may  gather  from 
what  he  subsequently  wrote,  was  no 
unenlightened  spectator  of  the  down- 
ward .  tendencies  of  the  French  mon- 
archy. 

Travelling  through  Switzerland, 
Goldsmith  appears  to  have  made  the 
acquaintance  of  Voltaire  at  Geneva, 
and,  crossing  the  Alps,  to  have  pene- 
trated Italy  as  far  at  least  as  the  chief 
cities  of  Lombardy  and  Florence.  In 
the  beginning  of  1756,  he  was  again 
in  England. 

On  his  landing  at  Dover,  at  the  age 
of  twenty-eight,  begins  with  him  the 
real  struggle  for  life.  He  is  too  old 
for  dependence  upon  the  scant  re- 
sources of  home  any  longer ;  the  ani- 
mal spirits  of  youth  in  their  first  ef- 
.fervescence  have  subsided,  and  he  can 

*  Inquiry  in  to  the  Present  State  of  Polite 
Learning. 


no  longer  hide  his  mortifications  in  a 
foreign  land,  or  divert  them  by  its 
novelties  and  amusements.  The  hard 
realities  of  English  life  are  before  him ; 
hard  enough  they  had  recently  proved 
to  the  indomitable  moral  energy  and 
strength  of  Johnson ;  how  will  Gold- 
smith with  his  susceptibilities  and 
weaknesses  encounter  them?  With 
suffering  and  humiliation  enough,  as 
we  shall  see,  but  with  a  glorious  tri- 
umph in  the  end.  Happily,  the  strug- 
gle was  relieved  by  the  cheerfulness 
of  his  disposition,  and  "  a  knack  of 
hoping,"  as  he  called  it,  in  which  he 
had  great  advantages  over  Johnson, 
while  his  imagination  and  sense  of 
humor  invited  him  to  a  certain  superi- 
ority over  the  lowest  parts  he  was 
called  upon  to  perform.  We  may  con- 
stantly observe  him  in  his  writings 
turning  his  discomfitures  to  profit,  and 
even  as  he  had  fluted  his  way  through 
poverty  on  the  Continent,  making  with 
the  magic  of  his  pen,  his  petty  miseries 
"  discourse  most  excellent  music."  It 
was  not  an  easy  thing  at  the  very  en- 
trance upon  this  new  period  of  his  ca- 
reer, for  this  starving  man  to  get  even 
from  Dover  to  London.  He  accom- 
plished it,  it  is  said,  by  a  turn  at  low 
comedy  with  some  strolling  players  in 
a  barn,  and  had  offered  his  services  on 
the  way  as  a  hireling  in  an  apothecary's 
shop.  The  latter  became  one  of  his 
earliest  resources  in  London  in  em- 
ployment with  one  Jacob,  on  Fish 
Street  Hill,  for  whom  he  pounded 
drugs,  and  by  whose  assistance  he  WHS 
promoted  to  a  humble  physician  for 
the  poor  of  the  class  of  Johnson's  friend 
Levett.  It  is  of  this  period  of  his  life 
that  the  story  is  told  of  his  perse  v  6 


OLIVER  GOLDSMITH. 


.  ranee  in  keeping  possession  of  his  hat, 
of  which  a  respectful  patient  pertina- 
ciously sought  to  relieve  him.    He  held 
it  firmly  to  his  breast  to  conceal  the 
patch  in  the  dilapidated  second-hand 
velvet  coat  in  which  he  was  support- 
ing  Iris   professional   reputation.      A 
poor  patient,  a  printer's  workman  in- 
troduces him  to  his  master,  Richard- 
son, the  author  of  Clarissa,  who  gives 
him     some     employment     as     proof- 
reader.    One  of  his  fellow  Edinburgh 
students  falling  in  with  him  at  this 
time  was  constrained  to  listen  to  two 
or  three  acts  of  an  abortive  tragedy, 
and  to  a  still  more  chimerical  project 
of  proceeding  to  the  Holy  Land  to  de- 
cipher the  inscriptions  on  the  "  writ- 
ten mountains."     From  this  wildness 
of  the  imagination,  he  is  recalled  by 
the  daily  drudgery  of  usher  to  a  clas- 
sical school  kept  at  Peckham,  in  the 
neighborhood  of  London,  to  which  he 
was  introduced  by  another  of  his  Ed- 
inburgh  companions,  the   son   of   its 
proprietor,  Dr.  Milner.     There  would 
seem  to  have  been  some  obscure  ser- 
vice of  this  kind  in  another  situation 
not  long  before,  not  so  easily  traced  as 
that  at  Peckham,  the  memory  of  which 
survives  in  various  anecdotes  related 
by  the  family,  exhibiting  a  fondness 
for  practical  jokes  in  the  servants'  hall 
— proof  of  the  ignominy  of  the  posi- 
tion as  well  as  of  the  incumbent's  in- 
nate love  of  fun  and  frolic.     Like  his 
contemporary,  Johnson,  who  had  en- 
dured the  same  infliction,  he  had  no 
reason  to  remember  it  with  equanimity. 
Both  were  at  a  disadvantage  in  ap- 
pearance  and   personal    peculiarities. 
The   usher   or    under-teacher    of    his 
time  comes  up  in  Goldsmith's  writings 


with  a   feeling   of   anything   but   ad 
miration. 

He  had  not  been,  however,  many 
months  with  Dr.  Milner,  in  the  school 
at  Peckham,  when  he  made  the  ac- 
quaintance, at  his  table,  of  Griffiths, 
the  bookseller,  of  Paternoster  Row, 
who  was  engaged  in  the  publication  of 
the  "  Monthly  Review."  The  "  Critical 
Review,"  the  literary  character  of 
which  was  maintained  by  Smollett, 
was  then  pressing  him  hard,  and  Grif- 
fiths was  on  the  look-out  for  contribu- 
tors. Struck  by  some  remarks  of  Gold- 
smith, the  publisher,  thinking  he  might 
serve  his  purpose,  procured  from  him 
some  specimens  of  his  powers  as  a 
critic.  Their  merits  were  perceived  by 
the  shrewd  eye  of  Griffiths,  and  Gold- 
smith was  secured,  body  and  mind,  for 
a  year,  to  be  boarded  and  lodged  with 
his  employer,  be  paid  a  small  salary, 
and  write  articles  as  called  upon  for 
the  Review.  Griffiths,  who  was  much 
of  a  screw,  held  him  to  a  strict  account 
in  the  employment  of  his  time,  and 
when  his  daily  task  was  done,  it  was 
at  the  mercy  not  only  of  the  publisher 
himself  but  of  his  wife,  who  tampered 
with  the  articles.  This  arrangement 
with  Griffiths  lasted  five  months  of  the 
year,  when  it  was  broken  off.  It  was 
a  long  time  for  Pegasus  to  be  kept  in 
harness.  Goldsmith  resented  his  treat- 
ment, Griffiths  also  had  his  complaint, 
and  the  contract  was  closed.  In  dis* 
gust  at  the  poor  reward  of  literary  ex 
ertion,  the  author,  who  as  yet  hardly 
ventured  to  call  himself  such,  returned 
to  the  school  at  Peckham.  Dr.  Milner, 
who  had  shown  himself  in  the  affair 
with  Griffiths  desirous  to  promote  the 
welfare  of  Goldsmith,  now  undertook, 


36 


OLIVER  GOLDSMITH. 


through  the  influence  of  an  East  India 
director,  to  procure  him  a  medical  ap- 
pointment at  a  foreign  station;  and 
while  this  affair  was  in  progress,  he 
devoted  himself  assiduously  to  the  pre- 
paration of  an  independent  work  which 
should  give  his  friends  and  the  public 
some  assurance  of  his  talents.  The 
subject  which  he  chose  was  an  Enquiry 
into  the  Present  State  of  Polite  Learn- 
ing in  Europe,  as  the  book  was  en- 
titled on  its  publication. 

While  Goldsmith  was  engaged  on 
the  composition  of  this  work,  he  was 
assured  of  the  success  of  his  friend 
Milner's  application  for  his  employ- 
ment in  the  East.  He  was  in  fact  ap- 
pointed physician  to  one  of  the  fac- 
tories of  the  East  India  Company  on 
the  Coromandel  coast.  His  spirits  were 
raised  in  consequence,  and  he  applied 
himself  more  heartily  to  the  Essay, 
looking  to  its  success  to  supply  the 
means  for  his  outfit,  and  endeavoring 
with  honest  pride  and  confidence  to 
enlist  his  friends  in  Ireland  in  pro- 
curing subscriptions  for  the  book.  The 
letters  which  he  wrote  for  this  pur- 
pose are  in  his  best  vein,  full  of  kindly 
feelings  towards  his  correspondents, 
with  that  genial  humor  which  was 
never  more  fully  awakened  than  when 
he  thought  of  the  home  associations  of 
his  youth.  In  one  of  these  epistles  to 
Byanton,  at  Ballymahon,  he  let  his 
pen  wander  on  in  a  fine  strain  of  rhap- 
sody, picturing  to  himself,  what  he 
evidently  considered  the  greatest  ab- 
surdity, the  future  fame  of  Goldsmith ! 

Could  he  but  have  tasted  then  the 
reality  of  this  posthumous  applause ! 
For  he  was  entering  upon  his  darkest 
hours  of  disappointment.  From  some 


unexplained  cause  the  Coromandel  ap 
pointment  was  taken  from  him  and 
given  to  another ;  and  when,  in  des 
pair,  he  offered  himself  at  Surgeone 
Hall  for  examination  as  a  hospitaj 
mate,  with  an  eye  perhaps  to  the  ex- 
ample of  Smollett  and  service  in  the 
navy,  he  was  rejected  as  incompetent. 
This  was  his  last  attempt  at  profes- 
sional life.  Fortunately,  the  doors  of 
a  wider  temple  were  opening  before 
him.  But  they  were  to  be  entered 
through  much  sorrow.  Goldsmith, 
after  his  separation  from  Griffiths,  was 
still  called  upon  for  occasional  essays 
for  the  Review,  to  which  he  had  re- 
cently contributed  four  articles  to  pro 
pitiate  the  publisher  to  become  secu 
rity  for  him  with  his  tailor  in  pro- 
viding a  new  suit  of  clothes  for  the 
Surgeon's  examination.  Before  the 
debt  was  paid,  the  keeper  of  poor 
Goldsmith's  quarters,  in  his  humble 
retreat  in  Green  Arbor  Court,  was  ar- 
rested, and  his  wife  came  in  tears,  sup- 
plicating her  lodger  for  relief.  Gold- 
smith being  himself  in  arrears  to  the 
couple,  there  was  a  double  claim  upon 
him  as  a  man  and  a  debtor.  The  first 
was  with  him  always  sufficient.  To 
provide  means  on  the  emergency,  the 
new  suit  went  to  the  pawnbroker's, 
while  Griffiths'  four  books  for  review 
were  deposited  as  security  for  a 
loan  with  a  friend.  Immediately  upon 
this,  the  publisher  demanded  payment 
for  the  clothes  or  their  instant  return 
to  him,  calling  also  for  the  books.  In 
vain  Goldsmith  asked  for  delay,  while 
Griffiths  had  no  words  for  him  but 
those  of  insult  and  imputations  of 
fraud.  The  letter  which  Goldsmith 
wrote  in  reply  has  been  preserved —  a 


OLIVER  GOLDSMITH. 


most  touching-  memorial  of  his  suffer- 
ings. Manfully  rebuking  Griffiths  for 
his  aspersions,  he  deprecates  his  inter- 
pretation of  his  character,  and,  the  one 
ray  of  light  in  this  dark  epistle,  trusts 
that  on  the  appearance  of  his  book 
from  Mr.  Dodsley's  press,  the  "  bright 
side  of  his  mind"  may  be  revealed  to 
his  reviler.  But  Griffiths,  setting  aside 
his  avarice,  could  have  needed  no  in- 
struction on  this  point.  He  knew 
Goldsmith's  merits,  and  was  ready  to 
negotiate  with  him  for  a  Life  of  Vol- 
taire, out  of  the  allowance  for  which 
the  debt  to  the  tailor  was  paid.  The 
publication  of  the  Essay  on  Polite 
Learning  followed,  and  gave  the  au- 
thor at  once  a  respectable  standing  in 
the  world  of  letters.  He  had  written 
an  independent  book,  in  which  he 
had  manfully  and  tenderly  protested 
against  the  assumptions  which  stood 
in  the  way  of  men  of  genius,  and  it 
could  hardly  be  perused  by  a  candid, 
intelligent  reader  without  ranking 
its  author  among  their  number.  His 
course  from  the  date  of  the  publica- 
tion of  this  work  was  onward. 

The  Essay  on  Polite  Learning, 
though  relieved  by  much  happy 
illustration,  was,  upon  the  whole,  a 
purely  didactic  work,  where  the  free- 
dom of  movement  of  the  writer's  mind 
was  fettered  by  the  conditions  of  the 
subject.  Nor  had  he  a  fair  opportu- 
nity as  yet  to  exhibit  his  peculiar  vein 
in  the  magazines,  in  which  his  writings 
had  been  confined  mainly  to  revk .  ,rs. 
He  was  now  to  appear  in  his  individ- 
ual character,  subject  to  no  law  but 
that  of  his  humor,  as  the  genial  essay- 
ist, to  which  department  of  literature, 
after  all  that  had  been  accomplished 


in  the  Tatlers,  Spectators,  and  Guar- 
dians, he  was  to  impart  an  ease  and 
gracefulness  entirely  his  own.  At  the 
solicitation  of  Wilkie,  a  bookseller  in 
St.  Paul's  Churchyard,  he  undertook 
the  preparation  of  a  collection  of  mis- 
cellaneous papers  to  be  published 
weekly  in  a  distinct  pamphlet  form, 
to  which  he  gave  the  title,  "  The  Bee.'' 
The  first  number  appeared  at  the  be- 
ginning of  October,  1759,  and  was  fol- 
lowed by  seven  others,  the  contents  of 
which  were  all  furnished  by  himself 
Somehow,  as  a  whole,  the  publica- 
tion, though  it  contained  a  number  of 
very  pleasing  papers,  was  not  success- 
ful. It  was  too  much  of  a  miscellany 
to  fasten  the  attention  of  the  town. 
At  least  we  may  infer  this  from  the 
better  reception  of  the  writer's  next 
venture  in  this  line,  when  he  had  the 
advantage  of  greater  apparent  unity 
in  one  continuous  thread  upon  which 
to  hang  his  observations.  This  was 
but  a  couple  of  months  later,  when  he 
commenced  in  the  new  daily  paper 
started  by  Newbery,  the  "  Public  Led- 
ger," the  series  of  letters  in  the  char- 
acter of  a  Chinese  Philosopher  visiting 
England,  subsequently  collected  under 
the  title  of  "  The  Citizen  of  the  World." 
Under  this  thin  disguise  he  had  the 
privilege  of  satirizing  with  greater 
freedom  than  he  might  otherwise  have 
assumed,  the  vices  and  follies  of  the 
day ;  while  a  certain  piquancy  in  the 
invention  of  his  observer,  Lien  Chi 
Altangi,  the  curiosities  of  whose  "  flow- 
ery land  "  were  then  coming  into  fash- 
ionable vogue,  gave  an  interest  to  re- 
flections on  matters  of  government  and 
politics,  which  had  become  dull  and 
wearisome  in  the  ordinary  forms  of  dis 


OLIVER  GOLDSMITH. 


cussion.  Goldsmith,  too,  by  this  time, 
from  his  practice  in  magazines  and 
reviews,  had  become  a  thorough  adept 
in  the  arts  of  composition  in  this 
lighter  walk  of  literature,  and  success 
had  given  him  courage  to  trust  to  his 
own  genius.  The  volumes  of  the  "  Citi- 
zen of  the  World"  contain  some  of 
his  most  charming  writings.  The  style, 
in  his  unapproachable  idiomatic  felic- 
ity, invests  the  most  familiar  topics 
with  interest,  while  it  is  frequently  the 
medium  of  new  ideas,  on  the  most  im- 
portant. He  is  more  than  once  in  ad- 
vance of  his  age  as  a  reformer  on  ques- 
tions of  national  and  domestic  policy, 
ventilates  various  sound  notions  of  so- 
cial as  well  as  political  economy,  and 
is  always  on  the  side  of  virtue  and 
humanity.  His  satire  on  occasion  is 
sufficiently  pungent ;  but  it  has  no  bit- 
terness, and  is  always  sheathed  in  the 
most  exquisite  humor.  As  the  papers 
grew  in  number  from  week  to  week, 
his  wit,  so  far  from  flagging,  acquired 
new  powers  by  exertion;  his  touch 
was  at  once  lighter  and  more  assured ; 
and  in  his  introduction  of  the  "  Man 
in  Black,"  disguising  his  benevolence 
under  an  assumption  of  cynicism,  and 
in  "  Beau  Tibbs,"  who  sought  to  con- 
ceal the  poverty  of  his  poor  vain  life 
by  the  pretences  of  the  imagination, 
he  added  two  new  and  delightful  char- 
acters, worthy  of  association  with 
Roger  de  Coverley  and  his  friends  in 
the  "  Spectator,"  to  the  gallery  of  Eng- 
lish fiction. 

The  enterprise  of  Newbery  in  his 
various  literary  undertakings  now  gave 
Goldsmith  constant  employment,  with 
a  paymaster  ready  to  assist  him  ii  his 
occasional  extra  pecuniary  necessities, 


the  result  usually  of  his  generosity 
and  hospitality.  The  squalid  lodging 
in  Green  Arbor  Court  was  deserted  for 
respectable  rooms  in  Wine  Office  Court, 
Fleet  Street,  where,  in  the  spring  of 
1761,  we  hear  of  Johnson  as  a  visitor, 
and  a  year  or  so  later,  also  under  the 
wing  of  Newbery,  our  author  is  in 
pleasant  rural  quarters  at  Islington, 
daily  entertaining  his  friends  in  the 
intervals  of  his  preparation  of  a  series 
of  letters  on  the  History  of  England, 
which,  with  an  eye  to  popular  favor, 
were  set  forth  on  their  publication  as 
addressed  by  a  nobleman  to  his  son. 
The  device  was  successful  enough,  the 
knowing  ones  of  the  day  variously  at- 
tributing the  book  to  Lords  Chester- 
field, Orrery  and  Lyttelton ;  so  true  in 
that  time  were  the  lines  of  Pope : 

"  Let  but  a  Lord  once  own  the  happy  lines, 
How  the  wit  brightens  and  the  sense  refines." 

The  year  1764  is  memorable  in  the 
life  of  Goldsmith,  for  in  that  he  wrote 
the  "  Vicar  of  Wakefield,"  and  com- 
pleted his  poem  of  the  "Traveller." 
The  first  knowledge  which  we  have  of 
the  former  is  in  a  striking  scene  in 
which  Johnson  appears  as  an  actor 
The  story  as  related  by  Johnson  him 
self  with  great  exactness  is  thus  given 
by  Boswell.  "I  received,"  said  John- 
son, "  one  morning,  a  message  from 
poor  Goldsmith  that  he  was  in  great 
distress,  and,  as  it  was  not  in  his  power 
to  come  to  me,  begging  that  I  would 
come  to  him  as  soon  as  possible.  I 
sent  him  a  guinea,  and  promised  to 
come  to  him  directly.  I  accordingly 
went  as  soon  as  I  was  dressed,  and 
found  that  his  landlady  had  arrested 
him  for  his  rent,  at  which  he  was  in  a 


OLIVER  GOLDSMITH. 


39 


violent  passion.  I  perceived  that  lie 
had  already  changed  my  guinea,  and 
had  got  a  bottle  of  Madeira  and  a 
glass  before  him.  I  put  the  cork  into 
the  bottle,  desired  he  would  be  calm, 
and  began  to  talk  to  him  of  the  means 
by  which  he  might  be  extricated.  He 
then  told  me  that  he  had  a  work 
ready  for  the  press,  which  he  produced 
to  me,  I  looked  into  it,  and  saw  its 
merit ;  told  the  landlady  I  should  soon 
return ;  and  having  gone  to  a  booksel- 
ler, sold  it  for  sixty  pounds.  I  brought 
Goldsmith  the  money,  and  he  dis- 
charged his  rent,  not  without  rating 
his  landlady  in  a  high  tone  for  having 
used  him  so  ill."  The  bookseller  to 
whom  Johnson  sold  the  work  was 
Francis  Newbery,  nephew  to  the  pub- 
lisher of  the  "  Citizen  of  the  World," 
by  whom  it  was  kept  more  than  a 
year  before  it  was  issued  from  the 
press.  Meanwhile,  the  elder  Newbery 
had  issued  "  The  Traveller ;  or,  a  Pros- 
pect of  Society,  a  Poem  by  Oliver  Gold- 
smith, M.  B.,"  the  first  of  his  publica- 
tions to  which  he  had  put  his  name  on 
the  title-page.  He  felt,  doubtless,  that 
it  was  a  distinct  personal  revelation 
of  himself,  something  which  he  might 
emphatically  call  his  own,  and  leave 
to  the  world  as  a  representation  of  his 
peculiar  powers. 

To  point  out  the  beauties  of  this 
poem,  would  be  to  comment  upon  every 
passage ;  and,  indeed,  it  may  be  safely 
left  to  the  admiration  of  its  myriad 
readers.  Though  praised  by  Johnson 
and  successful  at  the  start,  passing  in 
a  few  months  through  four  editions,  it 
grew,  by  degrees,  like  all  works  of  ge- 
nius, in  popular  estimation.  The  best 
test  of  its  merit  is  that  now,  after  the 


extraordinary  production  of  a  new  race 
of  poets  of  the  highest  powers  in  the 
nineteenth  century,  it  is  as  secure  of  ad- 
miration as  ever.  And  the  same  may 
be  said  of  the  ever  enduring  "Vicar," 
which  was  less  appreciated  on  its  first 
appearance  than  the  poem.  "  The  first 
pure  example  in  English  literature," 
says  Forster  "of  the  simple  domestic 
novel,"  and  in  spite  of  all  attempts 
since,  still  the  purest  and  brightest. 
Every  one  knows  and  loves  its  exqui- 
site grace  and  humor,  its  idyllic  scenes, 
its  characters  daily  repeated  in  real  life, 
and  ever  new  to  us  in  the  book ;  the 
jests  which  never  tire,  the  moralities 
which  never  grow  stale,  the  tender  hu- 
manity which  lurks  in  every  sentence, 
its  cheerful  gayeties  and  the  darkening 
shadows  over  the  gentle  picture,  which 
bring  still  stronger  into  relief,  the  ami- 
ability and  charity  of  the  whole. 

.Whatever  Goldsmith  touched  with 
his  pen  he  seemed  to  turn  into  an  en- 
during monument  of  himself.  By  two 
brief  productions  he  had  now  secured 
lasting  fame  as  poet  and  novelist;  hia 
next  attempt  was  in  the  humorous 
drama,  and  there,  too,  though  his  con- 
temporaries failed  fully  to  perceive  the 
fact,  he  again  wrote  his  name  high  on 
the  lists  of  the  genius  of  his  country 
men.  Of  his  two  comedies,  "The 
Good  Natured  Man,"  first  produced 
in  1768,  and  "  She  Stoops  to  Conquer," 
five  years  afterwards,  the  last  has 
proved  the  most  successful.  In  their 
own  day  they  met  with  considerable 
opposition,  for  they  came  to  supplant 
a  school  of  sentimental  comedy,  if 
comedy  so  tearful  a  business  can  be 
properly  called,  which  then  held  pos- 
session of  the  stage.  "During  some 


40 

years,"  Macaulay  tells  us,  "  more  tears 
were  shed  at  comedies  than  at  trage- 
dies; and  a  pleasantry  which  roused 
the  audience  to  anything  more  than  a 
grave  smile  was  reprobated  as  low.   It 
is  not  strange,  therefore,  that  the  very 
best    scene   in    the    *  Good   Natured 
Man/   that  in  which   Miss   Bichland 
finds  her  lover  attended  by  the  bailiff 
and  the  bailiff's  follower  in  full  court 
dresses,  should  have  been  mercilessly 
hissed,  and  should  have  been  omitted 
after  the  first  night."    It  seems  to  have 
been  a  hard  struggle  with  the  audi- 
ence, but  the  humor  of  Goldsmith,  se- 
conded by  the   irresistible  powers   of 
Ned  Shuter,  the  original  Croaker,  car- 
ried the  day.     Johnson,  who,  whatever 
liberties  he  may  have  taken  with  Gold- 
smith    in    conversation,    was    always 
strong   in   his  favor  on  critical    occa- 
sions, stood  firmly  by  his  side  at  the 
production   of  both   his    plays.      He 
furnished  the  Prologue  to  the  "  Good 
Natured  Man,"  and  worthily  received 
the  dedication  of  "She  Stoops  to  Con- 
quer."    "  It  may  do  me  some  honour," 
writes  Goldsmith,  "  to  inform  the  pub- 
lic that  I  have  lived  many  years  in  in- 
timacy with  you.     It  may  serve  the 
interest   of    mankind   also   to   inform 
them,  that  the   greatest  wit  may  be 
found  in  a  character,  without  impair- 
ing the  most  unaffected  piety."    In  the 
later  play,  produced,  like  its  prede- 
cessor, at  Covent  Garden  Theatre,  un- 
der the  management  of  the  elder  Col- 
man,  Shuter  was  the  Hardcastle  and 
Quick  the  Tony  Lumpkin  of  the  ori- 
ginal cast.     Mrs.  Bulkley  represented 
the  young  lady  heroine  in  both  pieces, 
Miss   Kichland  in   the  one  and  Miss 
Hardcastle  in  the  other.     Garrick,  who 


OLIVER    GOLDSMITH. 


had  unluckily  rejected  the  "  Good  Na- 
tured Man,"  when  offered  to  him  for 
performance  at  Drury  Lane,  disinterest- 
edly furnished  the  prologue  spoken  by 
Woodward  to  "She  Stoops  to  Con- 
quer." 

Intermediate  between  the  two  plays, 
in  1770,  appeared  Goldsmith's  second 
poem,  a  companion  piece  to  "  The  Tra- 
veller," "The  Deserted  Village."  It. 
was  dedicated  to  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds. 
As  its  name  imports,  its  design  is  to 
contrast  a  picture '  of  rural  felicity, 
with  its  loss  in  the  abandonment  of 
home  under  the  pressure  of  wealthy 
oppression.  In  this  respect,  as  Macau- 
lay  has  remarked,  "  it  is  made  up  of 
incongruous  parts.  The  village  in  its 
happy  days  is  a  true  English  village. 
The  village  in  its  decay  is  an  Irish  vil- 
lage. The  felicity  and  the  misery  which 
Goldsmith  has  brought  close  together 
belong  to  two  different  countries,  and 
to  two  different  stages  in  the  prospect 
of  society.  He  had  assuredly  never 
seen  in  his  native  island  such  a  rural 
paradise,  such  a  seat  of  plenty,  content 
and  tranquility,  as  his  Auburn.  He 
had  assuredly  never  seen  in  England 
all  the  inhabitants  of  such  a  paradise 
turned  out  of  their  homes  in  one  day 
and  forced  to  emigrate  in  a  body  to 
America.  The  hamlet  he  had  probably 
seen  in  Kent;  the  ejectment  he  had 
probably  seen  in  Munster;  but  by 
joining  the  two,  he  has  produced  some- 
thing which  never  was  and  never  will 
be  seen  in  any  part  of  the  world." 
I3ut,  notwithstanding  all  its  errors  of 
situation  and  political  economy,  the 
poem  will  be  read  for  its  felicitous 
scenes  and  imagery.  "  Sweet  Auburn  " 
remains,  and  will  still  continue  to  be 


OLIVER  GOLDSMITH. 


.the  "loveliest  village  of  the  plain;" 
and  though,  as  a  fact,  men  do  not  decay 
where  "wealth  accumulates,"  the  se- 
quel of  the  passage  has  a  sterling  ring 
whenever  and  wherever  it  can  be  ap- 
plied : 

'  Princes  and  lords  may  flourish,  or  may  fade ; 
A  breath  can  make  them,  as   a  breath  has 

made; 

But  a  bold  peasantry,  their  country's  pride, 
When  once  destroyed,  can  never  be  supplied." 

No  one  knew  better  than  Goldsmith 
the  truth  in  social  economy,  that  lux- 
ury, far  from  being  the  enemy,  is  the 
friend  of  civilization,  by  creating  new 
wants  and  calling  forth  for  their  sup- 
ply the  higher  arts  of  man.  He  had 
advocated  this  idea  in  his  Chinese 
Letters  in  the  "  Public  Ledger."  "  Ex- 
amine," says  he  there,  "  the  history  of 
any  country  remarkable  for  patience 
and  wisdom,  you  will  find  they  would 
never  have  been  wise  had  they  not 
been  first  luxurious ;  you  will  find  poets, 
philosophers,  and  even  patriots,  march- 
ing in  luxury's  train."  But  the  ex- 
igencies of  his  poem  led  him  appa- 
rently to  take  another  view  of  the 
matter.  However,  few  readers  think 
of  the  philosophy  of  the  poem,  or 
judge  it  by  the  rules  of  Adam  Smith, 
while  thousands  admire  its  descrip- 
tions of  the  Village  Preacher,  the 
homely  "  splendors,"  a  cabinet  Dutch 
picture,  of  the  ale-house,  and  the  sweet 
rural  scenery  which  surrounds  it. 

The  works  which  we  have  described, 
by  which  Goldsmith  survives,  the  po- 
ems, the  novel,  the  plays,  were  written 
for  fame.  There  were  a  host  of  others, 
of  which  Histories  of  Rome,  England, 
Greece,  and  a  History  of  Animated 
Nature,  written  by  contract  for  the 
6 


booksellers,  were  to  supply  his  imme- 
diate necessities.  They  gave  him  a  re- 
venue which  he  freely  expended  upon 
his  friends,  but  any  vanity  of  dress  or 
hospitality  which  they  may  have  led 
him  to  assume,  cost  him  dear  in  the 
constant  drudgery  to  which  they  sub- 
jected him.  And  yet  with  all  his  ef- 
forts he  was  constantly  in  pecuniar} 
embarrassment.  It  is  painful  to  sur- 
vey his  life  in  the  details  of  his  petty 
miseries  as  they  have  been  disclosed  to 
view  by  his  minute  biographers.  It  is 
still  more  painful  to  think  what  fine 
powers  were  lost  to  the  world  by  his 
sudden  death  in  the  midst  of  his  embar- 
rassments, when  the  ink  was  hardly 
dry  on  his  splendid  fragment  "  Retali- 
ation," a  poem,  one  of  the  happiest 
of  its  kind,  a  series  of  living  portraits, 
literary  companions  to  those  of  Rey- 
nolds, of  his  eminent  fellow-members 
of  the  Club — Burke,  Garrick,  Cumber- 
land and  Reynolds  among  the  num- 
ber. What  a  sketch  might  he  have 
written  with  equal  candor,  good  na- 
ture, and  still  more  of  feeling,  of  John- 
son. But  it  was  not  so  to  be.  There 
is  something  very  melancholy  in  the 
history  of  this  last  exertion  of  Gold- 
smith's poetical  faculty.  It  was  writ- 
ten to  meet  a  studied  provocation  by 
the  members  of  the  old  social  Club. 
In  his  absence  it  was  proposed  to  write 
an  epitaph  upon  him,  Garrick  ever 
ready  upon  such  occasions,  and  the  in- 
veterate punster,  Caleb  Whitefoord, 
appearing  as  the  leading  instigators, 
Garrick's  has  been  preserved,  and  is 
often  quoted: 

"  Here  lies  Nolly  Goldsmith,  for  shortness  call'd 

Noll, 

Who  wrote  like  an  angel,  but  talk'd  like  poor 
Poll." 


OLIYEE  GOLDSMITH. 


The  verses,  whatever  were  written, 
reached  Goldsmith,  who  was  called  up- 
on to  "retaliate."  And  in  how  just 
and  kindly  a  manner,  in  a  general  way, 
be  set  about  the  task,  pointing  his  sen- 
tences the  most  severe  with  wit  with- 
out malice,  and  tempering  censure  with 
the  most  considerate  of  praise.  Before 
he  had  finished  the  poem,  leaving  a 
line  on  Reynolds  half  ended,  he  was 
taken  ill  of  the  fever,  which  after  a 
few  days'  illness  carried  him  off  on  the 
4th  of  April,  1774.  He  had  only  re- 
cently completed  his  forty-fifth  year. 
He  was  buried  in  a  grave  in  the 
churchyard  of  the  Temple,  near  his 
residence.  No  stone  was  placed  there 
at  the  time  to  mark  the  spot,  and  the 
exact  place  where  the  poet  was  inter 
red  cannot  at  the  present  day  be  de- 
termined. A  public  funeral  had  been 
proposed,  but  a  private  ceremony  was 
thought  more  in  accordance  with  the 
circumstances  of"  his  death.  But  on 
the  stairs  which  led  to  his  chambers, 
in  Brick  Court,  was  gathered,  beside 
the  few  family  mourners,  a  number  of 
the  homeless  poor  women  whom  he 
had  befriended.  A  monument,  sug- 
gested by  Reynolds  and  sculptured  by 
NTollekens,  was  not  long  after  erected 


in  "Westminster  Abbey,  to  which  John 
son  furnished  the  Latin  inscription, 
weighty  with  words  of  admiration  for 
his  friend  and  his  writings,  which  the 
love  of  posterity  daily  confirms. 

A  portion  of  the  lines  are  intelligi- 
ble enough,  even  to  persons  unfamiliar 
with  the  language,  so  often  have  they 
been  cited  and  admired.  We  allude 
to  the  opening : 

OLIYARII  GOLDSMITH, 

Poetae,  Physici,  Historic!, 

qui  nullum  fere  scribendi  genus 

non  tetigit, 
nullum  quod  tetigit  non  ornavit. 

The  whole  has  been  literally  and 
elegantly  rendered  by  Mr.  Forster. 
We  give  it  entire,  omitting  the  records 
of  the  poet's  birth  and  death  at  the 
close : 

OP  OLIVER  GOLDSMITH — 
Poet,  Naturalist,  Historian, 
who  left  scarcely  any  kind  of  writing 

untouched, 

and  touched  nothing  that  he  did  not  adorn : 
Whether  smiles  were  to  be  stirred 

or  tears, 
commanding  our  emotions,  yet  a  gentle  master 

In  genius  lofty,  lively,  versatile, 

in  style,  weighty,  clear,  engaging — 

The  memory  in  this  monument  is  cherished 

by  the  love  of  Companions, 

the  faithfulness  of  Friends, 

the  reverence  of  Headers. 


HANNAH    MORE 


HANNAH  MORE  was  born  in 
1745,  at  the  village  of  Stapleton, 
Gloucestershire,  England,  where  her 
father,  Jacob  More,  a  man  of  a  learned 
education,  was  then  in  charge  of  a  char- 
ity school.  He  was  of  a  respectable 
family  and  had  been  intended  for  the 
church,  but  was  led  by  want  of  means 
to  the  inferior  occupation  of  a  country 
schoolmaster.  He  was  a  tory  and 
high-churchman,  though  other  mem- 
bers of  the  family  were  Presbyterians. 
He  married  a  farmer's  daughter,  like 
himself  a  person  of  sound  intellect. 
There  were  five  daughters  the  issue  of 
this  marriage,  of  whom  Hannah  was 
the  youngest  but  one.  She  exhibited 
in  her  earliest  childhood  a  remarkable 
quickness  of  apprehension,  learning  to 
read  between  her  third  and  fourth 
year,  and  before  she  had  reached  the 
latter,  recited  her  catechism  in  church 
to  the  admiration  of  the  village  rector. 
Her  nurse,  who  ie  described  as  a  pious 
old  woman,  had  a  distant  flavor  of  lit- 
erature about  her,  having  lived  in  the 
family  of  the  poet  Dryden,  and  thus 
early  the  name  and  fame  of  "  glorious 
John,"  became  familiar  to  her  infant 
charge.  "The  inquisitive  mind  of  the 
little  Hannah,"  says  her  biographer, 


Roberts,  "was  continually  prompting 
her  to  ask  for  stories  about  the  poet 
Dryden."  At  the  age  of  eight,  the 
child  had  developed  an  eager  thirst  for 
learning,  which  her  father  was  abun- 
dantly able  to  gratify  out  of  the  stock 
of  his  professional  acquisitions.  His 
stock  of  books  was  scanty,  the  greater 
part  of  them  having  been  lost  in  his  re- 
moval from  his  birth-place  in  Norfolk- 
shire  to  Stapleton ;  but  he  supplied  the 
deficiency  from  his  memory,  taking  his 
daughter  upon  his  knee  and  narrating 
to  her  stories  of  the  Greeks  and  Ro- 
mans, "  reciting  to  her  the  speeches  of 
his  favorite  heroes,  first  in  their  origi- 
nal language  to  gratify  her  ear  with 
the  sound,  and  afterwards  translating 
them  into  English ;  particularly  dwel- 
ling on  the  parallels  and  wise  sayings 
of  Plutarch;  and  these  recollections 
made  her  often  afterward  remark,  that 
the  conversation  of  an  enlightened  pa- 
rent or  preceptor,  constituted  one  of 
the  best  parts  of  education." 

In  this,  and  in  other  particulars  of 
the  mental  growth  and  literary  pro- 
gress of  Hannah  More,  we  are  remind 
ed  of  the  similar  intellectual  develop- 
ment of  Maria  Edgeworth.  She  also 
was  mainly  taught  in  her  childhood 

(43) 


HANNAH  MORE. 


by  her  father,  and  constantly  incul- 
cates in  her  admirable  writings  for  the 
young,  the  advantage  of  this  family 
oral  instruction.  Indeed,  with  impor- 
tant differences,  there  is  a  certain  pa- 
rallelism in  the  career  of  the  two  per- 
sonages. Both  entered  the  literary 
field  early,  were  welcomed  by  the  pub- 
lic at  the  start  and  continued  to  study 
and  write  under  favorable  circum- 
stances, through  an  unusually  prolong- 
ed term  of  life.  Miss  Edgeworth,  in- 
deed, was  born  twenty-two  years  later, 
but  the  two  were  on  the  earth  together 
for  sixty-six  years,  and,  during  the  most 
stirring  events  of  that  period  circling 
about  the  era  of  the  French  Revolu- 
tion, were  in  their  prime.  Both  were 
favorites  of  society,  and  saw  much  of 
the  most  cultivated  people  of  their 
times.  The  object  of  both,  as  authors, 
was  the  improvement  of  their  readers, 
and  there  was  a  great  resemblance  in 
the  method  of  their  labors  in  their 
plain,  practical  instructions  on  educa- 
tional topics,  though  one  drew  more 
from  every-day  experience  and  illus- 
trated the  lesson  with  gaiety  and  hu- 
mor, while  the  other,  as  we  shall  see, 
appealed  constantly  to  the  sanctions 
of  religion  and  Christianity.  In  this 
respect,  one,  in  fact,  supplements  the 
other.  Add  Hannah  More  to  Maria 
Edgeworth,  and  you  have  a  perfect 
whole. 

Hannah  More  gained  from  her  father 
an  early  knowledge  of  Latin,  which  she 
afterwards  improved  and  constantly 
maintained.  She  also  gradually  ac- 
quired an  intimate  acquaintance  with 
French  in  reading  and  speaking.  It 
was  her  parents'  design  that  the  chil- 
dren should  be  qualified  to  conduct  a 


lady's  boarding  school;  and  for  this 
purpose  the  eldest  sister  was  sent  to  a 
French  school  at  Bristol.  Returning 
at  the  end  of  each  week  to  pass  the 
Sunday  at  home,  she  communicated 
what  she  had  learned  to  Hannah,  who 
proved  an  apt  pupil.  This  scheme 
of  education  succeeded  so  well,  that 
about  the  year  1757,  the  eldest  sisters 
opened  the  projected  boarding  school 
at  Bristol,  and  prosecuted  it  from  the 
beginning  with  success.  Hannah,  then 
at  the  age  of  twelve,  was  taken  with 
them  and  continued  her  studies  with 
the  double  incentive  of  the  love  of 
knowledge,  and  a  maintenance  for  life 
involved  in  its  immediate  acquisition. 
Addison's  "Spectator,"  the  constant 
companion  of  the  generation  in  which 
she  was  born,  which  has  lit  the  way 
to  so  many  youthful  minds  in  the  pur 
suit  of  letters  and  cheerful  observation 
of  the  world,  was  the  first  book,  we 
are  told,  which  at  this  time  engrossed 
her  attention.  The  arrival  of  the  elder 
Sheridan,  the  father  of  Richard  Brins- 
ley,  who  came  to  deliver  his  famous 
lectures  on  oratory  at  Bristol,  proved 
an  interesting  point  in  Miss  More's 
life.  Sheridan  had  been  on  the  boards 
at  Drury  Lane,  a  species  of  rival  to 
Garrick,  and  had  for  years  been  con- 
nected with  the  theatre  at  Dublin. 
When  he  left  the  stage,  he  devoted 
himself  to  the  cause  of  education.  His 
lectures,  we  may  suppose,  retained  the 
best  part  of  his  theatrical  declamation. 
They  made  a  great  impression  on  the 
mind  of  Miss  More,  then  in  her  six 
teenth  year.  She  addressed  some 
verses  to  Sheridan,  which  led  to  his 
making  her  acquaintance.  In  all  this, 
her  mind  was  doubtless  directed  or  as 


HANNAH  MORE. 


45 


listed  in  a  tendency  to  dramatic  com- 
position which  soon  manifested  itself, 
and.  in  no  long  time,  resulted  in  her 
sharing  the  glories  of  the  British 
stage. 

She  was  also  benefited  at  this  early 
period  of  her  life  by  her  acquaintance 
with  Ferguson  the  astronomer,  who 
delivered  a  course  of  popular  lectures 
at  Bristol ;  and  still  more  by  the  in- 
structions of  a  Mr.  Peach,  a  linen-dra- 
per of  the  town,  a  man  of  cultivation 
in  English  literature,  who  had  been 
the  friend  of  Hume,  and  claimed  the 
credit  of  removing  from  his  History 
of  England,  more  than  two  hundred 
Scotticisms.  Encouraged  by  such  as- 
sociations as  these,  and  inspired  by  the 
work  of  education  in  her  sisters'  school, 
with  which  she  was  connected,  she, 
now  in  her  seventeenth  year,  executed 
her  first  important  literary  work.  It 
grew  out  of  the  recitations  in  the 
school,  which  she  observed  were  often 
drawn  from  plays,  the  moral  character 
of  which  would  not  bear  too  close  an 
inspection.  In  a  minor  way,  as  Racine 
wrote  his  sacred  dramas  of  "  Esther  " 
and  "  Athalie,"  at  the  request  of  Ma- 
dame de  Maintenon  in  her  religious 
days,  for  performance  before  her  young 
ladies  at  St.  Cyr,  so  Miss  Hannah  More 
prepared  her  pastoral  drama,  "The 
Search  After  Happiness."  It  is  in  a 
number  of  scenes  in  ten  syllable  rhym- 
ed verse,  interrupted  by  occasional 
lyric  effusions. 

In  accordance  with  its  moral  intent, 
we  have  in  the  drama  four  ladies  sev- 
erally discontented  with  the  world 
meeting  in  a  grove  in  search  of  the 
happiness  which  they  had  not  found 
in  fashion,  a  vain  pursuit  of  science, 


the  seductions  of  imagination  or  the 
languors  of  indifference,  for  in  each  of 
these  varieties  have  Euphelia,  Cleora, 
Pastorella  and  Laurinda,  been  in  turn 
engrossed.  Florella,  a  young;  virtuous, 
contented  shepherdess,  does  the  honors 
of  the  grove ;  and  Urania,  an  antique 
maiden  of  greater  authority,  reviews 
the  passions  of  them  all,  shows  their 
inefficiency  for  beings  of  immortal 
growth,  and  points  the  way  to  the 
better  life,  bidding  them : 

"  On  holy  faith's  aspiring  pinions  rise, 
Assert  your  birthright,  and  assume  the  skies." 

The  moral  is  a  good  one,  the  pictures 
of  life  in  a  certain  general  way,  accord- 
ing to  the  fashion  of  the  literature  of 
the  time,  are  piquant  and  animated; 
but  we  question  whether  young  ladies 
of  the  present  era  are  often  employed 
in  recitations  from  this  elegant  poem. 
Neither,  on  the  other  hand,  do  they 
declaim  passages  from  the  wicked 
plays  it  was  intended  to  supersede. 
The  argument  of  Miss  More,  as  it  is 
given  in  her  prologue,  is  insufficient. 
It  begs  the  whole  question  of  dramatic 
power  and  interest.  People  do  not 
necessarily  become  vicious  by  even  the 
ardent  impersonation  of  such  passions 
as  she  would  supersede  by  the  utter- 
ance of  simple,  moral  and  religious  re- 
flections, or  Mrs.  Siddons,  who  bore  a 
most  estimable  character,  would  have 
become  from  her  performance  of  Lady 
Macbeth,  one  of  the  most  wicked  per- 
sons of  her  sex.  Miss  More,  in  truth, 
concedes  this  by  her  lively  pictures  of 
the  world  in  this  very  innocent  pasto 
ral  drama,  and  when  she  herself  came 
to  write  for  the  stage,  she  invoked  the 
passions  she  here  laments. 

From  a  very  early  period  of  her  life. 


HANNAH  MORE. 


Miss  More  attached  herself  to  persons 
of  eminence  and  distinction  in  the  so- 
ciety by  which  she  was  surrounded. 
As  she  could  have  gained  little  from 
the  position  in  which  she  was  placed, 
one  of  a  group  of  several  maiden  la- 
dies earning  their  living  by  school- 
teaching,  the  attentions  which  she  re- 
ceived must  have  been  wholly  owing 
to  her  happy  disposition  and  literary 
acquirements.  Besides  Latin  and 
French,  she  cultivated  the  Spanish 
and  Italian  tongues.  From  the  latter 
she  translated  and  adapted  some  of 
the  dramatic  works  of  Metastasio. 
Most  of  these  were  destroyed.  One  of 
them,  based  on  the  Opera  of  Regulus, 
she  afterwards  extended  into  a  tragedy 
in  five  acts,  entitled  "The  Inflexible 
Captain." 

It  was  about  the  time  we  are  writing 
of,  when  she  was  at  the  age  of  twenty- 
two,  that  a  Mr.  Turner,  a  gentleman  of 
wealth,  living  on  a  fine  estate,  and 
nearly  double  her  own  age,  fascinated 
by  her  agreeable  qualities,  proposed  to 
her  in  marriage  and  was  accepted.  The 
thing  got  so  far  that  she  quitted  the 
school,  and  made  some  expensive  pre- 
parations for  her  new  mode  of  life. 
Mr.  Turner,  however,  hesitated,  and 
the  marriage  was  broken  off.  He, 
however,  settled  an  annuity  upon  her, 
to  enable  her  to  devote  herself  to  her 
literary  pursuits,  and  on  his  death  left 
her  a  thousand  pounds. 

We  now  reach  a  memorable  point  in 
Miss  More's  life,  the  year  of  her  first 
introduction  to  London  society.  In 
the  year  1774,  when  she  was  approach- 
ing the  age  of  thirty,  she  visited  the 
metropolis  with  two  of  her  sisters,  and 
sras  introduced  to  David  Garrick,  who 


had  been  enlisted  in  her  favor  by  see 
ing  a  letter,  shown  to  him  by  a  coin 
mon  friend,  in  which  she  described  her 
emotions  on  witnessing  his  perform- 
ance of  Lear.  The  great  actor  was  a 
very  sociable  and  friendly  man,  highly 
appreciative  of  literary  excellence,  and 
doubtless  thought  not  the  less  of  it 
when  it  was  displayed  by  an  agreeable 
young  lady  in  admiration  of  himself. 
The  acquaintance  soon  ripened  into  an 
intimacy,  which  remained  unbroken 
during  his  life.  The  theatre  was  then 
in  the  ascendant,  and  Miss  More,  spite 
of  her  recommendations  of  the  simple 
moral  drama  in  her  pastoral  play  at 
Bristol,  entered  heartily  into,  its  de- 
lights. She  was  present  at  the  perform- 
ance of  Sheridan's  first  dramatic  pro- 
duction, the  "Rivals,"  of  which  she 
says : — "  On  the  whole  I  was  tolerably 
entertained."  She  also  witnesses  a  re- 
presentation of  General  Burgoyne's 
"  Maid  of  the  Oaks."  Garrick  was  for 
the  time  unable  from  ill  health  to  ap- 
pear upon  the  stage.  "  If  he  does  not 
get  well  enough  to  act  soon,"  writes 
the  enthusiastic  Hannah,  "I  shall 
break  my  heart." 

Miss  More  had  a  very  useful  friend 
in  London  in  Miss  Reynolds,  the  sister 
of  Sir  Joshua,  by  whom  also  she  was 
much  admired.  Garrick  and  Reynolds 
opened  to  her  an  entrance  to  the  fore- 
most literary  society.  The  former  in- 
troduced her  to  Mrs.  Montagu,  then 
in  the  ascendant  with  all  her  charms 
of  wit  and  cleverness;  the  presiding 
deity  of  those  Montagu  House  assem- 
blies, which  gave  a  new  and  lasting 
name  to  the  female  cultivators  of  litera- 
ture, the  "  Blue  Stockings."  It  ori- 
ginated with  Admiral  Boscawen,  whose 


HANNAH  MOEE. 


.  wife  was  one  of  the  most  brilliant  of 
the  set.  Looking  one  evening  at  Dr. 
Stillingfleet's  gray  stockings,  which 
were  quite  out  of  keeping  with  the 
fashionable  requirements  of  the  time, 
he  christened  the  free-and-easy  com- 
pany the  "  Blue  Stocking  Society."  It 
was  a  palpable  hit.  A  name  was 
wanted  for  a  new  thing  under  the  sun 
in  England,  a  cultivated  lady  courting 
society  and  challenging  attention  for 
her  literary  attainments.  In  those  gos- 
siping days,  so  brightly  reflected  in  the 
letters  of  Walpole,  the  term  was  caught 
up  with  avidity,  and  from  that  day  to 
this  literary  ladies  have  had  to  endure 
this  nonsensical  appellation  because  slo- 
venly Parson  Stillingfleet  appeared  one 
night  at  Mrs.  Montagu's  in  blue  wors- 
ted stockings.  A  letter  addressed  by 
Miss  More  to  one  of  her  sisters,  to  be 
found  in  her  published  correspondence, 
gves  us  an  interesting  view  of  this  learn- 
ed society.  It  would  appear  from  a  sub- 
sequent letter  of  Miss  More,  that  this 
party  at  Mrs.  Montagu's  was  on  a 
Sunday  evening,  a  fact  of  which  she 
was  reminded  by  a  letter  from  home 
containing  a  clerical  admonition  from 
Dr.  Stonehouse.  She  received  it  in 
good  part,  and  acknowledged  the  de- 
linquency. "Conscience,"  she  writes, 
"had  done  its  office  before;  nay,  was* 
busy  at  the  time ;  and  if  it  did  not 
dash  the  cup  of  pleasure  to  the  ground, 
infused  at  least  a  tincture  of  worm- 
wood into  it."  The  thought  recurs  to 
her  again  at  a  Sunday's  dinner  at  Mrs. 
Boscawen's ;  but  as  she  reflects  she 
finds  there  is  preaching  and  solemnity 
in  life  everywhere,  even  in  its  gayest 
moments — a  truth  worth  .remembering 
by  a  certain  class  of  moralists — very 


touching  in  its  expression  by  Miss 
More.  After  her  return  at  night  from 
this  Sunday  dinner,  she  writes,  "  One 
need  go  no  further  than  the  company 
I  have  just  left,  to  be  convinced  that 
'pain  is  for  man,'  and  that  fortune, 
talents,  and  science  are  no  exemption 
from  the  universal  lot.  Mrs.  Montagu, 
eminently  distinguished  for  wit  and 
virtue,  the  wisest  where  all  are  wise, 
is  hastening  to  insensible  decay  by  a 
slow  but  sure  hectic.  Mrs.  Chapman 
has  experienced  the  severest  reverses 
of  fortune,  and  Mrs.  Boscawens'  life 
has  been  a  continued  series  of  afflic- 
tions, that  may  almost  bear  a  parallel 
with  those  of  the  righteous  man  of 
Uz." 

Hannah  More's  acquaintance  with 
Dr.  Johnson  deserves  a  separate  para- 
graph. She  came  up  to  London  with 
a  desire  of  all  things  to  see  the  great 
Doctor,  for  whom  she  had  always  a 
sincere  admiration  and  respect.  His 
moral  writings  in  the  "  Rambler," 
greatly  influenced  her  thought  and 
style.  The  attentions  paid  to  John- 
son strike  readers  of  the  present  day 
with  surprise.  A  first  interview  with 
him  was  looked  forward  to  with  the 
greatest  anxiety,  and,  when  accom- 
plished, was  frequently  recorded  as 
a  prominent  event  in  life.  The 
honors  paid  to  literature  and  art  in 
the  high  social  importance  and  esti- 
mation of  Johnson,  Reynolds,  Garrick 
and  Burke  and  their  fellows,  are  cer- 
tainly to  the  credit  of  English  life  in 
that  much  abused  eighteenth  century. 
The  world  has  since  grown  more  de- 
mocratic, and  literature,  perhaps, 
through  the  press,  more  powerful,  but 
the  republic  of  letters  would  then  ap- 


HANNAH  MORE. 


pear  to  have  been  more  fully  recog- 
nized as  a  social  institution  than  at 
present.  Miss  More  first  met  Johnson 
at  the  house  of  Sir  Joshua  Eeynolds. 
It  was  frequently  a  matter  of  uncer- 
tainty whether  a  new  comer  would  be 
received  by  the  learned  Doctor  with  a 
growl  or  a  smile.  It  depended  very 
much  upon  his  physical  condition,  and 
that  often  influenced  his  mind,  when 
he  became  moody  and  splenetic.  On 
handing  Miss  More  up-stairs  to  the 
drawing-room  where  Johnson  had  al- 
ready arrived,  Eeynolds  advised  Miss 
More  of  the  risk  she  was  running.  The 
more  pleasant  was  consequently  her 
surprise  when  the  dreaded  Leviathan 
came  forward  to  meet  her,  as  described 
by  her  biographer,  "  with  good  humor 
in  his  countenance,  and  a  macaw  of 
Sir  Joshua's  in  his  hand,  and  still  more, 
at  his  accosting  her  with  a  verse  from 
a  Morning  Hymn  which  she  had  writ- 
ten at  the  desire  of  Sir  James  Stone- 
house."  They  were  soon  on  a  most 
excellent  footing.  Miss  More  was  pre- 
sently taken  by  Miss  Reynolds  to 
Johnson's  house.  "  Can  you  picture 
to  yourselves,"  writes  one  of  Hannah's 
sisters  who  was  with  her,  to  the  family 
at  home,  "the  palpitation  of  our 
hearts  as  we  approached  his  mansion  ?" 
They  talked  with  the  Doctor  about  his 
"Tour  to  the  Hebrides,"  which  was 
just  coming  out,  and  were  introduced 
to  the  Doctor's  protege,  Mrs.  Williams, 
the  blind  poet,  whose  conversation  they 
found  lively  and  entertaining.  The 
Doctor  was  told  how  Miss  Hannah  on 
coming  in,  before  he  made  his  appear- 
ance, had  seated  herself  in  his  great 
chair  with  the  hope  of  catching  a  little 
ray  of  his  genius,  which  he,  of  course, 


laughed  at,  saying  that  he  never  sat  in 
that  chair,  and  that  it  reminded  him 
of  an  adventure  of  Boswell  and  him 
self  in  the  Highlands ;  how,  when  they 
were  stopping  a  night  at  an  inn  at  the 
place  where  they  imagined  the  weird 
sisters  had  appeared  to  Macbeth,  they 
were  quite  deprived  of  rest  at  the  idea, 
and  how,  the  next  morning,  they  were 
informed  that  all  this  happened  in 
quite  another  part  of  the  country. 
Miss  Reynolds  also  told  the  Doctor  of 
the  raptures  the  ladies  were  in  as  they 
rode  along  in  the  carriage  at  the  pros- 
pect of  visiting  him,  when  he  shook 
his  head  at  Hannah,  and  said  "  she 
was  a  silly  thing ! " 

At  tea,  one  evening  at  Sir  Joshua's, 
she  was  placed  next  to  Johnson  and 
had  him  entirely  to  herself.  "They 
were  both,"  writes  her  sister  Sarah, 
"in  remarkably  high  spirits;  it  was 
certainly  her  lucky  night !  I  never 
heard  her  say  so  many  good  things. 
The  old  genius  was  extremely  jocular, 
and  the  young  one  very  pleasant.  You 
would  have  imagined  we  had  been  at 
some  comedy,  had  you  heard  our  peals 
of  laughter.  They,  indeed,  tried  which 
could  'pepper  the  highest,'  and  it  is 
not  clear  to  me  that  the  lexicographer 
was  really  the  highest  seasoner." 
'  The  record  of  another  visit  to  John- 
son is  of  interest,  for  its  reference  to 
the  personal  history  of  the  Mores.  It 
occurs  in  a  letter  of  one  of  the  sisters 
in  1776.  "If  a  wedding,"  she  writes 
from  London  to  the  family  at  Bristol, 
"  should  take  place  before  our  return, 
don't  be  surprised, — between  the  mo- 
ther of  Sir  Eldred  and  the  father  of 
my  much-loved  Irene ;  nay,  Mrs.  Mon- 
tagu says,  if  tender  words  are  the  pre- 


HANNAH  MORE. 


cursors  of  connubial  engagements,  we 
may  expect  great  things ;  for  it  is  no- 
thing but  'child/  'little  fool,  'love,' 
and  '  dearest.'  After  much  critical  dis- 
course, he  turns  round  to  me,  and  with 
one  of  his  most  amiable  looks,  which 
must  be  seen  to  form  the  least  idea  of 
it,  he  says :  '  I  have  heard  that  you  are 
engaged  in  the  useful  and  honorable 
employment  of  teaching  young  ladies,' 
upon  which,  with  all  the  same  ease, 
familiarity  and  confidence  we  should 
have  done  had  only  our  own  dear  Dr. 
Stonehouse  been  present,  we  entered 
upon  the  history  of  our  birth,  parent- 
age and  education ;  showing  how  we 
were  born  with  more  desires  than  gui- 
neas ;  and  how,  as  years  increased  our 
appetites,  the  cupboard  at  home  began 
to  grow  too  small  to  gratify  them;  and 
how,  with  a  bottle  of  water,  a  bed,  and 
a  blanket,  we  set  out  to  seek  our  for- 
tunes; and  how  we  found  a  great 
house,  with  nothing  in  it ;  and  how  it 
was  likely  to  remain  so,  till  looking 
into  our  knowledge-boxes,  we  happen- 
ed to  find  a  little  laming,  a  good 
thing  when  land  is  gone,  or  rather 
none :  and  so  at  last,  by  giving  a  little 
of  this  laming  to  those  who  had  less 
we  got  a  good  store  of  gold  in  return ; 
but  how,  alas !  we  wanted  the  wit  to 
keep  it.  'I  love  you  both,'  said  the 
inamorato — 'I  love  you  all  five  —  I 
never  was  at  Bristol — I  will  come  on 
purpose  to  see  you — what !  five  wo- 
men live  happily  together !  —  I  will 
come  and  see  you — I  have  spent  a  hap- 
py evening — I  am  glad  I  came — God 
for  ever  bless  you,  you  live  to  shame 
duchesses.'  He  took  his  leave  with 
so  much  warmth  and  tenderness,  we 
were  quite  affected  at  his  manners." 
7 


The  "  Sir  Eldred  "  alluded  to  at  the 
beginning  of  the  letter,  was  the  hero 
of  a  legendary  tale,  entitled,  "  Sir  El- 
dred of  the  Bower,"  which  Hannah 
More  had  shortly  before  published  in 
London — a  ballad  of  the  modern  school 
of  Goldsmith's  Edwin  and  Angelina, 
in  the  same  easy,  gentle  measure.  A 
faultless  hero  marries  the  blameless 
daughter  of  a  neighboring  knight,  all 
in  the  prettiest  rural  scenery  and  sur- 
roundings, when  the  lady's  long  lost 
brother  returns  from  the  wars  to  clasp 
her  in  his  arms.  Sir  Eldred,  who  is 
passionate,  finds  them  in  this  attitude 
and  slays  the  stranger  on  the  spot,  the 
wife  dies  on  the  instant  in  sympathy 
with  her  brother,  and  Eldred  lives  a 
little  longer  in  too  wretched  a  condi- 
tion for  the  muse  to  describe.  The 
poem  was  accepted  as  a  certificate  of 
the  talents  of  the  author  by  the  lite- 
rary world  of  the  day.  Johnson  ad- 
mired it,  recited  its  best  passages  from 
memory,  and  contributed  a  stanza  of 
his  own  to  the  poem,  and  Garrick,  at 
a  little  party  at  her  house,  gave  the 
finest  pathetic  expression  to  its  tender 
melancholy.  "I  think,"  writes  Han- 
nah, "  I  never  was  so  ashamed  in  my 
life;  but  he  read  it  so  superlatively, 
that  I  cried  like  a  child.  Only  think 
what  a  scandalous  thing,  to  cry  at  the 
reading  of  one's  own  poetry !  I  could 
have  beaten  myself ;  for  it  looked  as 
if  I  thought  it  very  moving,  which,  I 
can  truly  say,  is  far  from  being  the 
case.  But  the  beauty  of  the  jest  lies 
in  this :  Mrs.  Garrick  twinkled  as  well 
as  I,  and  made  as  many  apologies  for 
crying  at  her  husband's  reading,  as  I 
did  for  crying  at  my  own  verses.  She 
got  out  of  the  scrape  by  pretending 


50 


HANNAH  MOKE. 


she  was  touched  at  the  story,  and  /, 
by  saying  the  same  thing  of  the  read- 
i.ug.  It  furnished  us  with  a  great  laugh 
at  the  catastrophe,  when  it  would  really 
have  been  decent  to  have  been  a  little 
/sorrowful."  Garrick,  who  was  a  mas- 
ter of  courtly  compliment,  in  occasional 
society  verses,  wrote  a  few  stanzas  on 
"Sir  Eldred,"  signed,  "Roscius,"  in 
which  he  celebrates  the  triumph  of  a 
female  genius  over  the  wits  of  the  other 
sex.  Miss  More  was  not  behind  the 
versatile  David  in  these  poetical  atten- 
tions. She  addressed  a  tame  sonnet 
to  the  river  Thames,  on  Mr.  and  Mrs. 
Garrick's  birthday,  and  wrote  a  rather 
clever  ode  to  Dragon,  his  housedog,  at 
Hampton,  in  which  she  introduces  some 
pretty  compliments  to  Roscius  on  his 
retirement  from  the  stage. 

ND  inamorato  was  ever  more  devoted 
to  a  lover  than  Miss  More  to  Garrick, 
in  attendance  upon  his  last  perform- 
ances at  Drury  Lane.  Her  devotion 
was  paid  not  less  to  his  kindly  qualities 
as  a  man,  than  to  his  genius  as  an  actor. 
He  was  one  of  the  first  to  give  her  a 
helping  hand  on  her  arrival  in  London. 
He  welcomed  her  to  his  seat  on  the 
Thames  at  Hampton,  where  she  passed 
many  days  and  weeks,  domesticated  as 
a  member  of  the  family  while  he  read 
to  her,  she  tells  us,  "  all  the  whimsical 
correspondence,  in  prose  and  verse, 
which  for  many  years,  he  had  carried 
on  with  the  first  geniuses  of  the  age  " — 
the  very  letters,  we  presume,  which  are 
now  gathered  in  the  two  ample  quartos 
of  the  "Garrick  Correspondence,"  to 
which  the  epistles  of  Hannah  herself 
contributed  not  the  least  delightful 
pages.  We  may  follow  her  in  her 
charming  letters,  through  her  visits  to 


Drury  Lane  during  Garrick's  last  sea 
sons  on  the  stage.  "Let  the  Muses  shed 
tears,"  she  writes  in  1776,  "  for  GarricL. 
has  this  day  sold  the  patent  of  Drury 
Lane  Theatre,  and  will  never  act  after 
this  winter.  Sic  transit  gloria  mundi  f 
He  retires  with  all  his  blushing  honors 
thick  about  him,  his  laurels  as  green  as 
in  their  early  spring.  Who  shall  supply 
his  loss  to  the  stage  ?  Who  shall  now 
hold  the  master-key  of  the  human  heart  ? 
Who  direct  the  passions  with  more  than 
magic  power  ?  Who  purify  the  stage  ? 
and  who,  in  short,  direct  and  nurse  my 
dramatic  muse  ? "  Of  the  last  anon. 

On  the  very  day  that  Garrick  took 
his  leave  of  the  stage,  after  he  had  intro- 
duced the  whole  series  of  his  perform- 
ances in  London,  Miss  More  wrote  from 
Bristol  to  the  departing  Roscius — "I 
think  by  the  time  this  reaches  yo  i  I 
may  congratulate  you  on  the  end  of 
your  labors  and  the  completion  of 
your  fame — a  fame  which  has  had  no 
parallel,  and  will  have  no  end.  Surely, 
to  have  suppressed  your  talents  in  the 
moment  of  your  highest  capacity  for 
exerting  them,  does  as  much  honour  to 
your  heart  as  the  exertion  itself  did  to 
your  dramatic  character ;  but  I  cannot 
trust  myself  on  this  subject,  because, 
as  Sterne  says,  '  I  am  writing  to  the 
man  himself;'  yet  I  ought  to  be  in- 
dulged, for,  is  not  the  recollection  of 
my  pleasures  all  that  is  left  to  me  of 
them  ?  Have  I  not  seen  in  one  season 
that  man  act  seven  and  twenty  times, 
and  rise  each  time  in  excellence,  and 
shall  I  be  silent  ?  Have  I  not  spent 
three  months  under  the  roof  of  that 
man  and  his  dear,  charming  lady,  and 
received  from  them  favors  that  would 
take  me  another  three  months  to  tell 


HANNAH  MORE. 


over,  and  shall  I  be  silent  ? "  In  the 
distribution  of  souvenirs  of  the  last 
performance  of  Garrick,  Miss  More  re- 
ceived from  him  the  shoe  buckles  which 
he  wore  in  Don  Felix,  upon  which  Mrs. 
Barbauld  wrote  a  doggrel  epigram  : — 

' '  Thy  buckles,  O  Garrick,  thy  friend  may  now 

use, 

But  no  mortal  hereafter  shall  tread  in  thy 
shoes." 

Miss  More's  intimacy  with  Garrick  was 
continued  after  his  retirement  from  the 
stage,  when,  though  he  played  no  more, 
he  still,  like  Pope's  departed  lady  of 
fashion,  "  o'erlooked  the  cards."  She 
sends  him  from  time  to  time  various 
little  items  of  theatrical  gossip  from 
the  provincial  stage  at  Bungay,  where 
she  is  on  a  visit,  and  where  the  Nor- 
wich tragedians  play  several  of  his 
pieces — "  Cymon,"  "  Bon-Ton,"  and 
"  The  Clandestine  Marriage,"  which 
he  wrote  with  Colman.  "  A  certain 
Mrs.  Ibbott  plays  Mrs.  Heidleburg 
more  than  tolerably,  and  a  pretty-look- 
ing Mrs.  Simpson  was  very  pleasing  in 
Fanny ;"  and  at  Bristol,  how  Reddish 
was  there  with  an  extempore  Mrs. 
Reddish,  which  excited  much  scandal 
and  opposition,  "  this  being  the  second 
or  third  wife  he  had  produced  at  Bris- 
tol: in  a  short  time  we  have  had  a 
whole  bundle  of  Reddishes,  and  all  re- 
markably impungent ;"  and  how  Red- 
dish was  pelted  at  his  benefit,  "but 
didn't  mind  that,  for  he  had  a  great 
house."  But  the  most  important  topic 
of  the  correspondence,  at  least  for  the 
gentle  Hannah,  was  the  preparation  of 
a  certain  tragedy  of  "Percy,"  which 
she  had  under  way  with  an  eye  to  the 
stage.  The  first  two  acts  were  got  off 
in  August,  1777,  to  Garrick,  who  ac- 


knowledges their  receipt,  addressing 
Miss  More  as  "My  dear  Nine"— -all 
the  Muses  rolled  into  one.  He  talks 
of  a  visit  to  Bath  and  Bristol.  "  Mrs. 
Garrick,"  he  says,  "is  studying  your 
two  acts.  We  shall  bring  them  with 
us,  and  she  will  criticise  you  to  the 
bone.  A  German  commentator  (Mon- 
taigne says)  will  suck  an  author  dry- 
She  is  resolved  to  dry  you  up  to  a 
slender  shape,  and  has  all  her  wits  at 
work  upon  you."  Presently  she  sends 
the  third  and  fourth  acts.  "I  shall 
leave  the  fifth  unfinished  till  I  am  so 
happy  as  to  be  indulged  with  your  in- 
structions. I  am  at  a  loss  how  to  man- 
age it.  As  to  madness,  it  is  a  rock  on 
which  even  good  poets  split ; — what, 
then,  will  become  of  me  ?  It  is  so 
difficult  and  so  dangerous,  I  am  afraid 
of  it."  Meantime  Garrick  is  stimu- 
lating her  anxieties.  "  I  hope  you  will 
consider  your  dramatic  matter  with  all 
your  wit  and  feeling.  Let  your  fifth  act 
be  worthy  of  you,  and  tear  the  heart  to 
pieces,  or  wo  betide  you !  I  shall  not 
pass  over  any  scenes  or  parts  of  scenes 
that  are  merely  written  to  make  up  a 
certain  number  of  lines.  Such  doings, 
Madam  Nine,  will  neither  do  for  you 
nor  for  me."  At  last  the  play,  dry- 
nursed  by  Garrick,  was,  through  his 
agency,  accepted  by  Harris,  the  man- 
ager of  Covent  Garden,  and  brought 
upon  the  stage.  Garrick  wrote  both 
prologue  and  epilogue,  in  the  former 
wittily  stirring  up  that  anomalous  per- 
sonage the  Chevalier  D'Eon.  Hannah 
pronounced  both  excellent,  and  had 
an  amusing  altercation,  which  she  de- 
scribes, over  the  price  with  the  author, 
who,  of  course,  would  receive  nothing. 
"  Dryden,"  he  said,  "  used  to  have  five 


HANNAH  MOEE. 


guineas  apiece,  but  as  he  was  a  richer 
man  he  would  be  content  if  I  would 
treat  him  with  a  handsome  supper 
and  a  bottle  of  claret.  We  haggled 
sadly  about  the  price,  I  insisting  that 
I  could  only  afford  to  give  him  a  beef- 
steak and  a  pot  of  porter;  and  at 
about  twelve  we  sat  down  to  some 
toast  and  honey,  with  which  the  tem- 
perate bard  contented  himself."  The 
play  under  Garrick's  auspices  proved  a 
decided  success.  Both  Mr.  and  Mrs. 
Garrick  were  present  with  her  at  its 
first  performance,  when  it  was  brought 
out  in  December.  It  had  a  run  of 
seventeen  nights,  and  that,  too,  while 
the  School  for  Scandal  was  in  its  first 
season.  It  was  published  with  a  dedi- 
cation to  Earl  Percy,  for  which  she  re- 
ceived the  thanks  of  that  noble  house, 
communicated  to  her  by  Dr.  Percy. 
Home,  the  author  of  Douglas,  was 
then  in  London  to  witness  the  produc- 
tion of  his  new  play  of  Alfred,  which 
proved  a  failure.  This  did  not,  how- 
ever, prevent  his  complimenting  his 
rival  on  her  success.  Mrs.  Montagu 
and  her  blue  stocking  friends  were,  of 
course,  on  hand  with  their  applause. 
We  get  in  the  author's  letters  a 
glimpse  or  two  of  the  acting.  "  One 
tear  is  worth  a  thousand  hands,"  she 
writes ;  "  and  I  had  the  satisfaction  to 
see  even  the  men  shed  them  in  abun- 
dance." "  Mrs.  Barry  is  so  very  fine  in 
the  mad  scene,  in  the  last  act,"  writes 
Miss  More,  "  that  though  it  is  niy  own 
nonsense,  I  always  see  that  scene  with 
pleasure."  Leaving  Sir  Joshua's  one 
evening  after  dinner,  when  the  com- 
pany had  sat  down  to  cards,  to  witness 
that  particular  act,  she  is  shocked  at 
entering  the  theatre  to  see  "  a  very  in- 


different house.  I  looked  (she  adds)  on 
the  stage  and  saw  the  scene  was  the 
inside  of  a  prison,  and  that  the  hero- 
ine, who  was  then  speaking,  had  on  a 
linen  gown.  I  was  quite  stunned,  and 
really  thought  I  had  lost  my  senses, 
when  a  smart  man,  in  regimentals,  be- 
gan to  sing,  '  How  happy  could  I  be 
with  either.' ':  Lewis  had  been  taken 
ill,  and  the  "  Beggar's  Opera  "  substi- 
tuted for  "  Percy."  The  pecuniary  re- 
sults were  very  gratifying,  the  author's 
nights,  sale  of  the  copy,  etc.,  amount- 
ing to  near  six  hundred  pounds,  which 
Garrick  invested  for  her  on  the  best 
security  at  five  per  cent.  A  first  im- 
pression of  the  play  of  four  thousand 
copies  was  sold  at  once,  and  a  second 
went  off  rapidly.  Some  forty  years 
after  this  first  success,  "  Percy  "  was  re- 
vived at  the  same  theatre,  with  Miss 
O'JSTeil  for  the  heroine. 

About  a  year  after  the  production 
of  "  Percy,"  Miss  More  was  summoned 
to  London  by  the  death  of  Garrick. 
She  joined  Mrs.  Garrick  at  her  express 
desire,  was  with  her  while  prepara- 
tions were  being  made  for  the  public 
funeral  in  Westminster  Abbey,  and 
witnessed  the  ceremony  from  a  gallery 
overlooking  the  grave.  Her  descrip- 
tion of  the  scene  is  full  of  feeling. 
"We  were  no  sooner  recovered  from 
the  fresh  burst  of  grief  on  taking  our 
places,  than  I  east  my  eyes  the  first 
thing  on  Handel's  monument,  and  read 
the  scroll  in  his  hand — 1 1  know  that 
my  Redeemer  liveth.'  Just  at  three, 
the  great  doors  burst  open,  with  a 
noise  that  shook  the  roof;  the  organ 
struck  up,  and  the  whole  choir,  in 
strains  only  less  solemn  than  the  '  arch- 
angel's trump,'  began  Handel's  fine 


HANNAH  MOKE. 


53 


antliem.  The  whole  choir  advanced 
to  the  grave,  in  hoods  and  surplices, 
singing  all  the  way ;  then  Sheridan,  as 
chief  mourner ;  then  the  body,  (alas ! 
whose  body !)  with  ten  noblemen  and 
gentlemen,  pall-bearers ;  then  the  rest 
of  the  friends  and  mourners  ;  hardly  a 
dry  eye — the  very  players,  bred  to  the 
trade  of  counterfeiting,  shed  genuine 
tears."  The  friendship  formed  with 
Mrs.  Garrick  in  the  life-time  of  her 
husband  remained  unbroken  during 
their  long  subsequent  career.  Miss 
More  was  for  several  years  her  con- 
stant guest.  She  was  with  her  in  her 
first  season  of  bereavement,  and,  in  her 
correspondence,  gives  several  touching 
anecdotes  of  her  conduct  during  the 
early  period  of  her  affliction. 

At  the  time  of  Garrick's  death,  Miss 
More  had  a  second  play  which  had 
partly  undergone  his  revision,  ready 
for  the  stage.  It  was  entitled  "The 
Fatal  Falsehood,"  and  was  brought  out 
the  same  year  with  some  success, 
though  inferior  to  that  which  had  at- 
tended "  Percy."  Miss  Young  played 
in  it  with  much  effect.  The  prologue 
was  written  by  the  author ;  the  epilo- 
gue, by  Sheridan,  a  fine  piece  of  wit  in 
an  amusing  picture  of  lady  authorship, 
delivered  in  the  character  of  an  envi- 
ous poetaster. 

The  remainder  of  the  year  1779  was 
mostly  passed  by  Miss  More  with  Mrs. 
Garrick  at  Hampton  in  close  retire- 
ment, but,  she  writes,  "  I  am  never 
dull,  because  I  am  not  reduced  to  the 
fatigue  of  entertaining  dunces,  or  of 
being  obliged  to  listen  to  them.  We 
Jress  like  a  couple  of  scaramouches, 
dispute  like  a  couple  of  Jesuits,  eat  like 
a  couple  of  aldermen,  walk  like  a  couple 


of  porters,  and  read  as  much  as  any  two 
doctors  of  either  university."  One  day 
came  "the  gentlemen  of  the  Museum 
to  fetch  poor  Mr.  Garrick's  legacy  of 
the  old  plays  and  curious  black-letter 
books,  though  they  were  not  things  to  be 
read,  and  are  only  valuable  to  anti- 
quaries for  their  age  and  scarcity ;  yet 
I  could  not  see  them  carried  off  with- 
out a  pang."  The  words  which  we  have 
marked  in  italics  are  noticeable,  show- 
ing the  neglect  into  which  the  early 
English  literature  about  the  time  of 
Shakespeare  had  fallen.  These  are  the 
very  plays  from  which  Charles  Lamb 
gathered  his  choice  volume  of  Drama- 
tic  Specimens.  Had  Miss  More  fully 
entered  into  their  spirit,  her  own  tra- 
gedies might  have  been  improved  by 
the  acquaintance,  with  a  better  chance 
than  they  are  having  of  being  read  by 
her  posterity.  The  old  intercourse  was 
still  and  for  several  years  after  kept  up 
with  the  literary  society  of  London 
which  met  at  Sir  Joshua's,  Mrs.Vesey's, 
Mrs.  Boscawen's,  aged  Mrs.  Delany's 
and  the  rest ;  but  we  hear  less  and  less 
of  fashionable  gaieties  at  the  theatre  or 
elsewhere.  A  growing  seriousness  was 
at  work  in  the  mind  of  the  fair  author, 
which  was  leading  her  to  new  schemes 
of  moral  improvement.  In  the  mean 
time,  she  summed  up  her  observations 
rather  than  experiences  of  the  worldly 
life  of  the  day  in  two  sprightly  poems, 
first  printed  together  in  1780,  and  pub- 
lished with  additions  in  1786.  In  one 
of  these,  entitled  "  The  Bas  Bleu ;  or, 
Conversation,"  she  celebrated  the  in- 
tellectual social  intercourse  which  ani- 
mated the  parties  of  Mrs.  Montagu 
and  Mrs.  Vesey,  and  sighed  for  the  de- 
parted days  when  the  winged  words 


HANNAH  MOKE. 


of  Garrick,  Johnson  and  Burke  gave 
flight  to  the  friendly  hours. 

"  And  Lyttleton's  accomplished  name, 
And  witty  Pulteney  shared  the  fame  ; 
The  men,  not  bound  by  pedant  rules, 
Nor  ladies  predeuses  ridicules  : 
For  polished  Walpole  showed  the  way, 
How  wits  may  be  both  learned  and  gay  ; 
And  Carter  taught  the  female  train, 
The  deeply  wise  are  never  vain. 

***** 

Here  rigid  Cato,  awful  sage  ! 
Bold  censor  of  a  thoughtless  age, 
Once  dealt  his  pointed  moral  round, 
And  not  unheeded  fell  the  sound  ; 
The  muse  his  honored  memory  weeps, 
For  Cato  now  with  Roscius  sleeps  1 " 

"Cato,"  Miss  Seward  thought  was 
an  odd  "  whig-title  "  for  the  tory  John- 
son. "  I  could  fancy  him,"  she  writes 
to  her  friend,  Court  Dewes, "  saying  to 
the  fair  author,  '  You  had  better  have 
called  me  the  first  Whig,  Madam,  the 
father  of  the  tribe,  who  got  kicked 
out  of  Heaven  for  his  republican  prin- 
ciples.' " 

"  Florio ;  a  Tale  for  Fine  Gentlemen 
and  Ladies,"  was  appropriately  dedi- 
cated to  Horace  Walpole,  not,  we  can 
hardly  imagine,  without  a  tinge  of  co- 
vert satire,  though  the  terms  in  which 
she  propitiates  the  wit  are  highly  flat- 
tering. The  story  is  well  told  in  octo- 
syllabic, verse,  bearing  a  general  resem- 
blance in  its  moral  to  Dryden's  "  Cy- 
mon  and  Iphigeneia,"  though  the  cir- 
cumstances are  quite  different, — in  the 
one  case  a  youth  being  rescued  from 
clownishness  and  neglect,  in  the  other 
from  foppery  and  licentiousness.  In 
both,  the  motive  power  is  a  charming 
woman.  Florio,  the  spoilt  child  of 
fortune ;  passing  his  life  in  fashionable 
frivolities,  a  smatterer  in  literature,  a 
free-thinker,  or  rather  no-thinker  in  re- 
ligion, is  brought  to  a  knowledge  of 


himself  by  the  simple  attractions  of  a 
country  Celia,  for  whom  at  first  he  has 
a  great  contempt ;  but  he  carries  back 
with  him  to  London  a  spark  of  love 
and  nature's  fire  in  his  breast,  and  by 
the  light  which  this  kindles,  all  the 
meritricious  attractions  of  the  metrop- 
olis which  had  formerly  fascinated  him 
grow  pale  and  worthless.  He  hurries 
back  to  the  country  and  the  poem  con- 
cludes with  the  triumph  of  virtue  in  a 
marriage  with  the  pious  Celia.  The 
sketch  of  Florio  in  his  days  of  worldli- 
ness  is  much  the  best  of  the  poem. 

Miss  More's  acquaintance  with  Ho- 
race Walpole  began  in  the  literary 
soirees  at  Mrs.  Yesey's  and  was  per- 
petuated in  visits  to  Strawberry  Hill, 
and  a  correspondence  which  was  con- 
tinued through  the  life  of  its  noble 
owner.  There  is  a  great  deal  of  com- 
pliment in  the  letters  on  both  sides , 
Walpole  was  always  fond  of  ladies' 
society,  and  gratefully  reciprocated  the 
attentions  of  a  lady  who  might  have 
been  his  satirist.  Miss  More,  on  the 
other  hand,  was  attracted  to  him  by 
his  kind  attentions  to  Mrs.  Vesey  in 
her  failing  health,  "my  dear,  infirm, 
broken-spirited,  Mrs.  Vesey,"  as  she 
calls  her  in  one  of  her  letters. 

The  home  life  of  the  five  sisters  at 
Bristol  was,  in  the  meanwhile  under- 
going a  change.  Hannah,  enriched  by 
her  literary  pursuits,  bought  a  small 
country  residence  near  Bristol,  which 
had  acquired  the  name  of  "  Cowslip 
Green,"  and  spent  more  of  her  time  in 
rural  occupations.  In  1789  her  sisters 
having  acquired  sufficient  property  by 
their  labors  retired  from  the  charge  of 
the  school  to  pass  their  time  between  a 
town  residence  which,  with  the  aid  of 


HANNAH  MORE. 


55 


Hannah,  they  had  erected  for  them- 
selves at  Bath  and  the  retreat  at  Cow- 
slip Green.  They  now  began  to  em- 
ploy themselves  in  what  became  the 
serious  occupation  of  their  lives,  the 
establishment  of  schools  for  the  educa- 
tion of  the  neglected  poor  in  their 
neighborhood.  The  first  of  these  was 
started  at  Chedder,  in  the  vicinity  of 
Bristol.  In  setting  this  on  foot,  Miss 
More  had  to  encounter  a  redoubtable 
giant  gf  the  old  tory  breed,  in  a  person 
whom  she  describes  as  "  the  chief  des- 
pot of  the  village,  very  rich  and  very 
brutal ; "  but  she  was  not  to  be  deter- 
red by  any  such  lions  in  the  way, "  so," 
says  she, "  I  ventured  to  the  den  of  this 
monster,  in  a  country  as  savage  as  him- 
self, near  Bridgewater."  She  was  met 
7oy  an  argument  which  was  very  com- 
mon in  those  days  in  England,  and 
which  she  had  often  practically  to  re- 
fute, that "  religion  was  the  worst  thing 
for  the  poor}  for  it  made  them  lazy  and 
useless."  It  was  in  vain  that  she  rep- 
resented to  these  country  landowners 
that  men  would  become  more  industri- 
ous as  they  were  better  principled,  and 
that  she  had  no  selfish  ends  in  her  un- 
dertakings. It  wras,  however,  by  ap- 
pealing to  their  selfish  interests  that 
she  was  at  last  permitted  to  proceed. 
"  I  made,"  says  she,  "  eleven  of  these 
agreeable  visits ;  and  as  I  improved  in 
the  art  of  canvassing,  had  better  suc- 
cess. Miss  Wilberforce  would  have 
been  shocked,  had  she  seen  the  petty 
tyrants  whose  insolence  I  stroked  and 
tamed,  the  ugly  children  I  praised,  the 
pointers  and  spaniels  I  caressed,  the 
cider  I  commended,  and  the  wine  I 
swallowed.  After  these  irresistible 
flatteries,  I  inquired  of  each  if  he  could 


recommend  me  to  a  house;  and  saiu 
that  I  had  a  little  plan  which  I  hoped 
would  secure  their  orchards  from  being 
robbed,  their  rabbits  from  being  shot, 
their  game  from  being  stolen,  and 
which  might  lower  the  poor-rates." 
The  squirearchy  upon  this  relented 
and  soon  the  benevolent  Miss  More  had 
nearly  three  hundred  children  in  the 
school  learning  the  elements  of  a  reli- 
gious education.  While  this  work  was 
going  on  in  the  country,  Miss  More 
was  appealing  to  the  world  in  her 
writings,  which  were  now  assuming  a 
direct  reformatory  tone  with  an  earnest 
inculcation  of  religious  principle  as  the 
governing  motive  of  life.  Her  first  as- 
sault was  directed  against  fashionable 
follies  and  vices  which  she  had  hitherto 
tickled  in  verse.  She  now  resumed  the 
argument  in  prose  with  a  heavier  em- 
phasis. Her  "  Thoughts  on  the  Impor- 
tance of  the  Manners  of  the  Great  to 
General  Society,"  first  printed  anony- 
mously in  1798,  as  a  sequel  or  aid  to 
a  royal  proclamation  which  had  just 
been  issued  against  irreligion  and  im- 
morality, was  a  bombshell  thrown  into 
the  ranks,  not  of  the  grossly  wicked, 
but  of  those  who  were  considered  good 
sort  of  people,  whom  she  desired  to 
bring  to  a  higher  standard  of  justice 
and  morality.  It  was  a  vigorous  pro- 
test against  luxury  and  extravagance, 
pointing  out  the  selfishness  and  conse- 
quent hard-heartedness  of  indulgence, 
with  a  special  effort  to  correct  the 
evils  arising  from  the  ill  observance  of 
Sunday,  and  the  prevalent  passion  for 
play.  In  the  course  of  her  remarks,  the 
author  speaks  of  a  singular  custom 
which  then  prevailed,  "  the  petty  mis- 
chief of  what  is  called  card  ino7iey?  in 


56 


MOKE. 


the  exaction  of  a  part  of  their  wages 
from  servants  to  pay  for  the  playing 
cards  furnished  to  the  guests !  She 
denounces  this  as  "  a  worm  which  is 
feeding  on  the  vitals  of  domestic  vir- 
tue." She  argues  too  the  old  social 
question  of  "  the  daily  and  hourly  lie 
of  Not  at  Home"  for  which  she  would 
provide  some  suitable  phrase  for  the 
necessary  denial  to  a  visitor,  in  prefer- 
ence to  the  education  of  the  servant  in 
the  art  of  lying.  She  makes  an  appeal 
also  for  "  hair-dressers,"  as  a  peculiarly 
oppressed  class  of  Sunday  laborers. 

Not  long  after,  in  1791,  this  pro- 
duction was  followed  by  an  elaborate 
prose  composition  of  a  similar  charac- 
ter, "  An  Estimate  of  the  Religion  of 
the  Fashionable  World,"  in  which  the 
general  neglect  of  Christianity  by 
leading  men  of  the  time  was  compared 
with  its  open  avowal  by  the  Sidneys, 
Hales  and  Clarendons  of  a  former  age ; 
the  benevolence  of  the  day  was  tested 
in  its  motives;  Christian  education 
shown  to  be  neglected,  and  a  revival 
of  its  vital  spirit  declared  to  be  a  ne- 
cessity of  the  period.  A  copy  of  the 
work  reached  Horace  Walpole,  who 
speaks  of  it  in  a  letter  to  Miss  Berry : 
"Good  Hannah  More  is  laboring  to 
amend  our  religion,  and  has  just  pub- 
lished a  book  called  '  An  Estimate  of 
theEeligion  of  the  Fashionable  World.' 
It  is  prettily  written,  but  her  enthu- 
siasm increases;  and  when  she  comes 
to  town,  I  shall  tell  her  that  if  she 
preaches  to  people  of  fashion,  she  will 
be  a  bishop  in partibus  infidelium" 

In  pursuing  her  labors  in  the  instruc- 
tion and  amelioration  of  the  condition 
of  the  poor,  Miss  More  began  the  issue 
•>f  a  series  of  popular  tracts,  written  in 


a  plain  attractive  style,  suited  to  the 
comprehension  of  the  peasant  class  for 
which  they  were  intended.  They  were 
written  with  such  marked  ability  that 
they  soon  took  a  wider  range  and  were 
largely  circulated  throughout  Great 
Britain  and  America.  It  is  sufficient 
to  allude  to  such  narratives  among 
them  as  "The  Shepherd  of  Salisbury 
Plain,"  and  such  allegories  as  "  Parley 
the  Porter,"  to  remind  the  reader  of 
their  scope  and  spirit.  The  former  has 
passages  worthy  of  De  Foe ;  the  latter 
might  have  been  written  by  Bunyan. 
The  theory  of  the  author's  religious 
teaching  of  the  poor,  was  in  general 
very  simple.  In  one  of  her  letters 
published  in  the  "Whalley  Corres- 
pondence," referring  more  particularly 
to  the  conduct  of  her  charity  schools, 
she  says,  "My  grand  principle  is,  to 
infuse  into  the  minds  of  the  young 
people  as  much  Scriptural  knowledge 
as  possible.  Setting  them  to  get  by 
heart  such  portions  of  the  Bible  as 
shall  take  in  the  general  scheme  of 
doctrine  and  practice,  then  bringing 
that  knowledge  out,  by  easy,  simple 
and  intelligible  conversation,  and  then 
grafting  it  into  their  minds  as  a  prin 
ciple  of  action,  and  making  all  they 
learn  practical  and  of  personal  appli- 
cation, seems  the  best  method.  I  am 
extremely  limited  in  my  ideas  of  in- 
structing the  poor.  I  would  confine  it 
entirely  to  the  Bible,  Liturgy  and  Ca- 
techism, which,  indeed,  includes  the 
whole  of  my  notion  of  instruction. 
To  teach  them  to  read,  without  giving 
them  principles,  seems  dangerous ;  and 
I  do  not  teach  them  to  write,  even  in 
my  weekly  schools.  Almost  all  I  do 
is  done  by  conversation,  by  a  simple 


HANNAH  MORE. 


57 


exposition  of  texts,  which  I  endeavor 
to  make  as  lively  and  interesting  as  I 
can,  often  illustrating  what  is  difficult 
by  instances  drawn  from  common  life. 
To  those  who  attend  four  Sundays 
without  intermission,  I  give  a  penny, 
provided  they  are  at  school  by  prayer- 
time;  this  promotes  regularity  of  at- 
tendance more  than  anything.  Tarts 
and  gingerbread  occasionally  are  a 
pleasant  reward.  Clothing  I  cannot 
afford  to  such  multitudes  as  my  differ- 
ent schools  consist  of,  but  at  Whitsun- 
tide, I  give  them  all  some  one  article 
of  dress.  If  there  is  a  large  family  of 
boys,  for  instance,  I  give  to  one  a  jacket, 
to  another  a  shirt,  to  a  third  shoes,  to 
a  fourth  a  hat,  according  to  their  re- 
spective wants;  to  the  girls,  a  white 
calico  apron,  and  muslin  cap  and  tip- 
pet, of  which  I  will  send  you  one  for  a 
pattern  if  you  wish  it." 

Strange  that  in  the  carrying  out  such 
simple  works  of  benevolence  as  this, 
Miss  More  should  have  been  thwarted 
and  even  persecuted.  Though  as  con- 
servative as  any  person  in  the  kingdom, 
she  was  charged  with  undermining  the 
British  constitution  and  encouraging 
French  revolutionary  propagandism 
with  her  nefarious  proceedings;  with 
unsettling  the  established  order  of 
British  society;  with  assisting  "Me- 
thodism," as  if  that  were  an  unpardon- 
able sin.  The  curate  of  Blaydon  who 
presided  over  her  district  was  especially 
unfriendly,  and  at  one  time  succeeded 
in  closing  the  school  which  was  for  a 
time  re-opened.  The  controversy  on 
the  subject  became  fierce  and  lasting. 
Various  meetings  were  held,  numerous 
pamphlets  were  written.  No  less  than 
thirty-four  distinguished  persons,  most 
8 


of  them  of  the  clerical  order,  took  part 
in  the  discussion.  Miss  More  was  fairly 
distracted  by  the  agitation,  and  fell  sick 
in  consequence.  Meanwhile,  she  was 
continuing;  the  series  of  her  didactic 

O 

writings,  by  the  publication  in  1799  of 
one  of  the  largest  and  most  elaborate 
of  her  works,  entitled  "  Strictures  on 
the  Modern  System  of  Female  Educa- 
tion." The  book  abounds  with  sound 
practical  suggestions  on  subjects  of 
every-day  life.  Though  earnest  in  the 
ultimate  reference  of  all  to  the  sanc- 
tions of  Christian  precept,  it  is  marked 
by  a  general  moderation  of  thought. 

About  the  year  1802,  Miss  More  left 
her  residence  at  Cowslip  Green  for  one 
more  convenient  in  the  vicinity,  which 
proved  so  attractive,  that  the  town 
house  at  Bath  was  also  relinquished 
for  it.  This  new  situation,  known  by 
the  name  of  Barley  Wood,  became 
thenceforward  identified  with  the  fam- 
ily, continuing  their  home  till  Miss  Han- 
nah More  became  the  sole  survivor,  and 
finally  quitted  it  for  another  residence 
after  a  sojourn  of  fully  a  quarter  of  a 
century.  From  this .  spot  her  frequent 
correspondence  with  Wilberforce  was 
dated,  and  thence  went  forth  several 
of  her  most  important  books  to  the 
world.  In  1805,  she  published  the 
work  entitled  "  Hints  Towards  Form- 
ing the  Character  of  a  Young  Princess," 
written  at  the  earnest  request  of  Bishop 
Porteus,  who,  it  is  said,  favored  the 
design  of  placing  the  education  of  the 
young  Princess  Charlotte,  for  whom  it 
was  intended,  under  her  care. 

The  next  important  publication  by 
Miss  More  is  that,  with  the  exception 
perhaps  of  her  more  popular  tracts, 
by  which  she  is  best  known  at  present, 


HAKNAH  MOKE. 


— the  novel,  if  it  may  be  so  called,  en- 
titled "  Ccelebs  in  Search  of  a  Wife." 
Immediately  popular  at  the  time  when 
it  was  first  issued — it  ran  through 
eleven  editions  within  nine  months — 
it  is  still  the  most  read  of  its  author's 
productions.  A  simple  test  is  at  hand. 
The  seven  volumes  of  the  American 
edition  of  her  complete  works  belong- 
ing to  a  large  city  circulating  library 
are  before  us.  Six  are  clean  and  un- 
injured by  use ;  the  remaining  one  con- 
taining "  Coelebs  "  is  worn  with  hand- 
ling, and  ready  to  fall  in  pieces.  The 
poems  and  the  moral  essays,  the  in- 
struction for  peasants  and  princesses, 
the  lay  sermons,  worthy  of  Dr.  Blair, 
and  with  something  of  his  style,  are 
forgotten :  the  novel,  lightly  as  it 
touches  the  heart  and  life,  is  remem- 
bered and  read.  It  is  hardly  fair,  how- 
ever, to  regard  it  simply  as  a  novel.  It 
is  in  reality,  as  its  second  title  imports, 
a  series  of  observations  on  domestic 
habits  and  manners,  religion  and  mo- 
rals. "  Love  itself,"  as  the  author  re- 
marks in  the  preface,  "  appears  in  these 
pages,  not  as  an  ungovernable  impulse, 
but  as  a  sentiment  arising  out  of  qual- 
ities calculated  to  inspire  attachment 
of  persons  under  the  dominion  of  reason 
and  religion,  brought  together  by  the 
ordinary  course  of  occurrences  in  a 
private  family  party."  With  this  un- 
derstanding the  work  may  be  read 
without  disappointment ;  otherwise,  it 
might  be  thought  to  lack  invention  and 
'nterest  in  the  plot,  which  is  of  the  sim- 
plest. It  certainly,  with  all  its  sermon- 
izing, has  many  entertaining  sketches  of 
society  and  lively  exhibitions  of  char- 
acter. There  is  nothing  very  extrava- 
gant or  any  way  impossible  in  the  model 


young  lady  of  the  writer's  imagination, 
who  is  brought  forward  to  engage  the 
affection  of  the  scrutinizing  and  ex- 
acting young  bachelor.  The  key-note 
of  the  book  is  struck  in  the  first  chap- 
ter, which  is  devoted  to  the  perfections 
of  Mother  Eve,  as  exhibited  by  John 
Milton,  in  his  immortal  epic.  Lucilla, 
the  irresistible  heroine  of  the  book,  is 
the  daughter  of  most  exemplary  par 
ents,  a  pious,  practical  and  literary 
father,  a  graceful  and  elegant  hostess 
her  mother.  She  herself  has  all  the 
domestic  and  a  proper  share  of  the 
philanthropic  virtues.  "Fresh  as  a 
rose  and  gay  as  a  lark,"  she  rises  at  six 
in  the  morning  in  summer,  gives  two 
hours  to  reading  in  her  closet,  has  an 
interview  with  the  housekeeper  on  the 
state  of  the  larder,  and  enters  the  break- 
fast room,  a  charming  spectacle  of 
health,  cheerfulness  and  culinary  ac- 
complishments. "  Her  conversation, 
like  her  countenance,  is  compounded  of 
liveliness,  sensibility  and  delicacy." 
She  teaches  her  little  sisters,  is  modest 
and  engaging,  visits  the  poor  and  reads 
Latin  with  her  father  every  day.  Coe- 
lebs, with  credit  to  himself,  is  smitten 
through  and  through  by  the  archer 
god  at  the  first  sight  of  her  in  the  four- 
teenth chapter.  Twenty-five  more  are 
occupied  before  the  wedding  comes  on, 
in  playing  her  off  through  a  series  of 
important  discussions  on  social  and  ed- 
ucational topics  by  persons  of  the  most 
decisive  ways  of  thinking.  The  con- 
versations are  always  sensible  and  in- 
structive, sometimes  amusing.  The 
book  is  the  gathering  up  on  the  part  of 
the  author — it  was  published  when  she 
was  sixty-four — of  a  cheerful  lifetime 
of  thought  and  experience. 


HANNAH  MOKE. 


We  have  still  to  record  several 
other  of  her  books:  "Practical  Piety," 
published  in  1811 ;  and  the  collection 
of  essays  entitled  "  Christian  Morals," 
put  forth  the  next  year;  "An  Essay 
on  the  Character  and  Practical  Writ- 
ings of  Saint  Paul,"  in  1815;  and 
'Moral  Sketches  of  Prevailing  Opin- 
ions and  Manners,  Foreign  and  Domes- 
tic/' in  1819.  A  month  after  the  pub- 
lication of  this  last  work,  Miss  More's 
sole  surviving  sister  Martha  died ;  the 
others  had  been  called  away  within  a 
few  preceding  years.  In  1822  she  no- 
tices in  one  of  her  letters  from  Barley 
Wood,  the  death  of  "  my  ancient  and 
valued  friend,  Mrs.  Grarrick.  I  spent 
.above  twenty  winters  under  her  roof, 
and  gratefully  remember  not  only  their 
personal  kindness,  but  my  first  intro- 
duction through  them  into  a  society  re- 
markable for  rank,  literature  and  tal- 
ents. Whatever  was  most  distinguished 
in  either  was  to  be  found  at  their  table." 
It  was  a  backward  glance  through  near- 
ly fifty  years  by  a  venerable  lady  at 
seventy-seven.  Though  visited  by  fre- 
quent and  severe  illness,  she  was  to 
survive  ten  years  longer.  In  1828,  she 
finally  left  her  home  at  Barley  Wood, 
a  name  endeared  to  the  Christian  world, 
for  a  new  residence  at  Clifton,  where 
on  the  7th  of  September,  1833,  she 
placidly  closed  a  life  which  must  ever 
be  regarded  with  admiration  and  affec- 
tion. A  letter  from  one  of  the  wor- 
thiest of  her  friends,  Sir  Robert  Inglis, 
to  the  E-ev.  Dr.  McVickar,  in  New 
York,  records  her  Christian  departure. 
''Though  her  mind  has  been  eclipsed 
bv  her  advancing  years, — for  she  was 


in  the  eighty-ninth  year  of  her  life, — 
and  though  there  was  no  longer  any 
continuous  flow  of  wisdom  and  of  pie- 
ty from  her  lips,  yet  the  devotional 
habit  of  her  days  of  health,  gave  even 
to  the  weakness  of  decay  a  sacred  char- 
acter, and  her  affections  remained  strong 
to  the  last.  On  Thursday  (two  days 
before  she  expired)  she  became  more 
evidently  dying,  her  eyes  closed,  she 
made  an  effort  to  stretch  forth  her 
hands,  and  exclaimed  to  her  favorite 
sister,  now  for  many  years  departed,- 
'Patty — -joy.'  And  when  she  could  no 
longer  articulate,  her  hands  remained 
clasped  as  in  prayer." 

The  five  sisters  lie  interred  within  a 
plain  enclosure  in  Wrington  church 
yard,  a  large  stone  slab  recording  theii 
names,  the  dates  of  their  birth  and  of 
their  deaths. 

The  portrait  of  Hannah  More  was 
painted  in  her  early  days  by  Sir  Joshua 
Reynolds.  As  described  by  a  recent 
English  writer,  "it  represents  hei 
small  and  slender  figure  gracefully  at- 
tired; the  hands  and  arms  delicately 
fine,  the  eyes,  large,  dark  and  lus- 
trous ;  the  eyebrows  well  marked  and 
softly  arched ;  the  countenance  beam- 
ing with  benevolence  and  intelligence." 
Mr.  S.  C.  Hall,  who  visited  her  at  Bar 
ley  Wood  about  1825,  thus  decribea 
her  appearance  :  — "  Her  form  was 
small  and  slight, -her  features  wrin- 
kled with  age ;  but  the  burden  of  eighty 
years  had  not  impaired  her  gracious 
smile,  nor  lessened  the  fire  of  her 
dark  eyes,  the  clearest,  the  brightest 
and  the  most  searching  I  have 


seen. 


FREDERIC    11. 


celebrated  King  of  Prussia 
-A-  was  in  no  respect  indebted  for  his 
personal  greatness  to  the  virtues  or  ex- 
ample of  his  immediate  progenitors. 
His  grandfather  Frederic  I.,  the  first 
of  the  House  of  Brandenburg  who  as- 
sumed the  title  of  king,  was  a  weak 
and  empty  prince,  whose  character  was 
taken  by  his  own  wife  to  exemplify 
the  idea  of  infinite  littleness.  His 
father,  Frederic  William,  was  a  man 
of  a  violent  and  brutal  disposition,'  ec- 
centric and  intemperate,  whose  princi- 
pal, and  almost  sole  pleasure  and  pur- 
suit, was  the  training  and  daily  super- 
intendence of  an  army  disproportion- 
ately greater  than  the  extent  of  his  do- 
minions seemed  to  warrant.  It  is  how- 
ever to  the  credit  of  Frederic  William 
as  a  ruler,  that,  notwitstanding  this 
expensive  taste,  his  finances  on  the 
whole  were  well  and  economically  ad- 
ministered ;  so  that  on  his  death  he  left 
a  quiet  and  happy,  though  not  wealthy 
country,  a  treasure  of  nine  millions  of 
crowns,  amounting  to  more  than  a 

7  O 

year's  revenue,  and  a  well-disciplin- 
ed army  of  76,000  men.  Thus  on 
his  accession,  Frederic  II.  (or  as,  in 
consequence  of  the  ambiguity  of  his 
father's  name,  he  is  sometimes  call- 

(60) 


ed,  Frederic  HI.)  found,  ready  prepar 
ed,  men  and  money,  the  instruments 
of  war;  and  for, this  alone  was  he  in- 
debted to  his  father.  He  was  born 
January  24th,  1712.  From  Frederic 
William,  parental  tenderness  was  not 
to  be  expected.  His  treatment  of  his 
whole  family,  wife  and  children,  was 
brutal:  but  he  showed  a  particular 
antipathy  to  his  eldest  son,  from  the 
age  of  fourteen  upwards,  for  which  no 
reason  can  be  assigned,  except  that  the 
young  prince  manifested  a  taste  for  lit- 
erature, and  preferred  books  and  music 
to  the  routine  of  military  exercises. 
From  this  age,  his  life  was  embittered 
by  continual  contradiction,  insult,  and 
even  personal  violence.  In  1730,  he 
endeavored  to  escape  by  flight  from 
his  father's  control ;  but  this  intention 
being  revealed,  he  was  arrested,  tried 
as  a  deserter,  and  condemned  to  death 
by  an  obedient  court-martial ;  and  the 
sentence,  to  all  appearance,  would  have 
been  carried  into  effect,  had  it  not  been 
for  the  interference  of  the  Emperor  of 
Germany,  Charles  VI.  of  Austria.  The 
king  yielded  to  his  urgent  entreaties, 
but  with  much  reluctance,  saying, 
"  Austria  will  some  day  perceive  what 
a  serpent  she  warms  in  her  bosom." 


FEEDEEIC  II. 


£n  1732,  Frederic  procured  a  remission 
of  this  ill  treatment  by  contracting, 
much  against  his  will,  a  marriage  with 
Elizabeth  Christina,  a  princess  of  the 
house  of  Brunswick.  Domestic  hap- 
piness he  neither  sought  nor  found; 
for  it  appears  that  he  never  lived  with 
his  wife.  Her  endowments,  mental  and 
personal,  were  not  such  as  to  win  the 
affections  of  so  fastidious  a  man,  but 
her  moral  qualities  and  conduct  are 
highly  commended ;  and,  except  in  the 
resolute  avoidance  of  her  society,  her 
husband  through  life  treated  her  with 
high  respect,  From  the  time  of  his 
marriage  to  his  succession,  Frederic 
resided  at  E-heinsberg,  a  village  some 
leagues  north-east  of  Berlin.  In  1734, 
he  made  his  first  campaign  with  Prince 
Eugene,  but  without  displaying,  or 
finding  opportunity  to  display,  the 
military  talents  by  which  he  was  dis- 
tinguished in  after-life.  From  1732, 
however,  to  1740,  his  time  was  princi- 
pally devoted  to  literary  amusements 
and  society.  Several  of  his  published 
works  were  written  during  this  period, 
and  among  them  the  "  Anti-Machiavel," 
and  "  Considerations  on  the  Character 
of  Charles  XII. ;"  he  also  devoted  some 
portion  of  his  time  to  the  study  of 
tactics.  His  favorite  companions  were 
chiefly  Frenchmen:  and  for  French 
manners,  language,  cookery  and  philo- 
sophy, he  displayed  through  life  a  very 
decided  preference. 

The  early  part  of  Frederic's  life  gave 
little  promise  of  his  future  energy  as  a 
soldier  and  statesman.  The  flute,  em- 
broidered clothes,  and  the  composition 
of  indifferent  French  verses,  seemed  to 
occupy  the  attention  of  the  young  di- 
lettante. His  accession  to  the  throne, 


May  31, 1740,  called  his  dormant  ener- 
gies at  once  into  action.  He  assumed 
the  entire  direction  of  government, 
charging  himself  with  those  minute 
and  daily  duties  which  princes  gene- 
rally commit  to  their  ministers.  To 
discharge  the  multiplicity  of  business 
which  thus  devolved  on  him,  he  laid 
down  strict  rules  for  the  regulation  of 
his  time  and  employments,  to  which, 
except  when  on  active  service,  he  sci  i- 
pulously  adhered.  Until  an  advanced 
period  of  life  he  always  rose  at  four 
o'clock  in  the  morning;  and  he  be 
stowed  but  a  few  minutes  on  his  dress, 
in  respect  of  which  he  was  careless, 
even  to  slovenliness.  But  peaceful 
employments  did  not  satisfy  his  active 
mind.  His  father,  content  with  the 
possession  of  a  powerful  army,  had 
never  used  it  as  an  instrument  of  con- 
quest :  Frederic,  in  the  first  year  of  hi& 
reign,  undertook  to  wrest  from  Aus- 
tria the  province  of  Silesia.  On  that 
country,  which,  from  its  adjoining  sit- 
uation, was  a  most  desirable  acquisi- 
tion to  the  Prussian  dominions,  it  ap- 
pears that  he  had  some  hereditary 
claims,  to  the  assertion  of  which  the 
I  time  was  favorable.  At  the  death  of 
Charles  VI.,  in  October,  1740,  the  here- 
ditary dominions  of  Austria  devolved 
on  a  young  female,  the  afterwards  cele- 
brated Maria  Theresa.  Trusting  to 
her  weakness,  Frederic  at  once  marched 
an  army  into  Silesia.  The  people,  being 
chiefly  Protestants,  were  ill  affected  to 
their  Austrian  rulers,  and  the  greater 
part  of  the  country,  except  the  for- 
tresses, fell  without  a  battle  into  the 
King  of  Prussia's  possession.  In  the 
following  campaign,  April  10th,  1741, 
was  fought  the  battle  of  Molwitz 


62 


FKEDEKIC  II. 


which  requires  mention,  because  in  this 
engagement,  the  first  in  which  he  com- 
manded, Frederic  displayed  neither  the 
skill  nor  the  courage  which  the  whole 
of  his  subsequent  life  proved  him  really 
to  possess.  It  was  said  that  he  took 
shelter  in  a  windmill,  and  this  gave 
rise  to  the  sarcasm,  that  at  Molwitz 
the  King  of  Prussia  had  covered  him- 
self with  glory  and  with  flour.  The 
Prussians  however  remained  masters 
of  the  field.  In  the  autumn  of  the 
same  year  they  advanced  within  two 
days'  march  of  Vienna ;  and  it  was  in 
this  extremity  of  distress,  that  Maria 
Theresa  made  her  celebrated  and  af- 
fecting appeal  to  the  Diet  of  Hungary. 
A  train  of  reverses,  summed  up  by  the 
decisive  battle  of  Czaslaw,  fought  May 
17th,  1742,  in  which  Frederic  display- 
5d  both  courage  and  conduct,  induced 
Austria  to  consent  to  the  treaty  of 
Breslaw,  concluded  in  the  same  sum- 
mer, by  which  Silesia,  with  the  excep- 
tion of  a  small  district,  was  ceded  to 
Prussia,  of  which  kingdom  it  has  ever 
since  continued  to  form  a  part. 

But  though  Prussia  for  a  time  en- 
joyed peace,  the  state  of  European 
politics  was  far  from  settled,  and 
Frederic's  time  was  much  occupied  by 
foreign  diplomacy,  as  well  as  by  the 
internal  improvements  which  always 
were  the  favorite  objects  of  his  solici- 
tude. The  rapid  rise  of  Prussia  was 
not  regarded  with  indifference  by 
other  powers.  The  Austrian  govern- 
ment was  inveterately  hostile,  from 
offended  pride,  as  well  as  from  a  sense 
of  injury ;  Saxony  took  part  with 
Austria ;  Russia,  if  not  an  open  en- 
emy, was  always  a  suspicious  and  un- 
friendly neighbor ;  and  George  II.  of 


England,  the  King  of  Prussia's  uncle, 
both  feared  and  disliked  his  nephew 
Under  these  circumstances,  upon  the 
formation  of  the  triple  alliance  be- 
tween Austria,  England,  and  Sardinia. 
Frederic  concluded  a  treaty  with 
France  and  the  Elector  of  Bavaria, 
who  had  succeeded  Charles  VI.  as 
Emperor  of  Germany ;  and  antici- 
pated the  designs  of  Austria  upon 
Silesia,  by  marching  into  Bohemia  in 
August,  1744.  During  two  campaigns 
the  war  was  continued  to  the  advan- 
tage of  the  Prussians,  who,  under  the 
command  of  Frederic  in  person,  gained 
two  signal  victories  with  inferior  num- 
bers, at  Hohenfriedberg  and  Soor. 
At  the  end  of  December,  1745,  he 
found  himself  in  possession  of  Dres- 
den, the  capital  of  Saxony,  and  in  a 
condition  to  dictate  terms  of  peace  to 
Austria  and  Saxony,  by  which  Silesia 
was  again  recognized  as  part  of  the 
Prussian  dominions. 

Five  years  were  thus  spent  in  ac- 
quiring and  maintaining  possession  of 
this  important  province.  The  next 
ten  years  of  Frederic  IL's  life  passed 
in  profound  peace.  During  this  period 
he  applied  himself  diligently  and  suc- 
cessfully to  recruit  his  army,  and  reno- 
vate the  drained  resources  of  Prussia. 
His  habits  of  life  were  singularly 
uniform.  He  resided  chiefly  at  Pots- 
dam, apportioning  his  time  and  his 
employments  with  methodical  exact- 
ness; and,  by  this  strict  attention  to 
method,  he  was  enabled  to  exercise  a 
minute  superintendence  over  every 
branch  of  government,  without  es 
tranging  himself  from  social  pleasures 
or  abandoning  his  literary  pursuits, 
After  the  peace  of  Dresden  he  com 


FREDERIC  II. 


nienced  liis  "  Histoire  de  mon  Temps," 
ivhich,  in  addition  to  the  history  of 
his  own  wars  in  Silesia,  contains  a 
general  account  of  European  politics. 
About  the  same  period  he  wrote  his 
"Memoirs  of  the  House  of  Branden- 
burg," the  best  of  his  historical  works. 
He  maintained  an  active  correspond- 
ence with  Voltaire,  and  other  of  the 
most  distinguished  men  of  Europe. 
He  established,  or  rather  restored,  the 
Academy  of  Sciences  of  Berlin,  and 
was  eager  to  enrol  eminent  foreigners 
among  its  members,  and  to  induce 
them  to  resort  to  his  capital ;  and  the 
names  of  Voltaire,  Euler,  Maupertuis, 
La  Grange,  and  others  of  less  note, 
testify  his  success.  But  his  avowed 
contempt  for  the  German,  and  admira- 
tion of  the  French  literature  and  lan- 
guage, in  which  all  the  transactions  of 
the  Society  were  carried  on,  gave  an 
exotic  character  to  the  institution,  and 
crippled  the  national  benefits  which 
might  have  been  expected  to  arise 
from  it. 

The  story  of  Frederic's  association 
with  Voltaire,  as  narrated  in  his  usual 
vivid  manner  by  Macaulay,  is  worthy 
of  "being  given  in  detail,  for  its  illus- 
tration of  the  characters  of  both  these 
extraordinary  personages.  It  may 
fairly  be  prefaced  with  the  same  writ- 
er's account  of  the  king's  entertain- 
ment of  his  literary  friends  at  Potsdam. 

"  It  was  the  just  boast  of  Schiller, 
that  in  his  country  no  Augustus,  no 
Lorenzo,  had  watched  over  the  infancy 
of  art.  The  rich  and  energetic  lan- 
guage of  Luther,  driven  by  the  Latin 
from  the  schools  of  pedants,  and  by 
the  French  from  the  palaces  of  kings, 
had  taken  refuge  among  the  people. 


Of  the  powers  of  that  langiiage,  Fre- 
deric had  no  notion.  He  generally 
spoke  of  it,  and  of  those  who  used  it, 
with  the  contempt  of  ignorance.  His 
library  consisted  of  French  books  ;  at 
his  table  nothing  was  heard  but 
French  conversation.  The  associates 
of  his  hours  of  relaxation  were,  for  the 
most  part,  foreigners.  Britain  fur- 
nished to  the  royal  circle  two  distin 
guished  men,  born  in  the  highest  rank, 
and  driven  by  civil  dissensions  from 
the  land  to  which,  under  happier 
circumstances,  their  talents  and  virtues 
might  have  been  a  source  of  strength 
and  glory.  George  Keith,  Earl  Mar- 
ischal  of  Scotland,  had  taken  arms  for 
the  house  of  Stuart  in  1^15,  and  his 
younger  brother  James,  then  only  sev- 
enteen years  old,  had  fought  gallantly 
by  his  side.  When  all  was  lost  they 
retired  together  to  the  Continent,  roved 
from  country  to  country,  served  under 
many  standards,  and  so  bore  themselves 
as  to  win  the  respect  and  good- will  of 
many  who  had  no  love  for  the  Jacobite 
cause.  Their  long  wanderings  termin- 
ated at  Potsdam  ;  nor  had  Frederic  any 
associates  who  deserved  or  obtained  so 
large  a  share  of  his  esteem.  They  were 
not  only  accomplished  men,  but  nobles 
and  warriors,  capable  of  serving  him 
in  war  and  diplomacy,  as  well  as  of 
amusing  him  at  supper.  Alone  of  all 
his  companions  they  appear  never  to 
have  had  reason  to  complain  of  his 
demeanor  towards  '•hem.  Some  of 
those  who  knew  the  palace  best  pro- 
nounced that  the  Lord  Marischal  was 
the  only  human  being  whom  Frederic 
ever  really  loved. 

"  Italy  sent  to  the  parties  at  Pots- 
dam  the  ingenious  and  amiable  Alga- 


64 


FEEDERIC   II. 


rotti,  and  Bastiani,  the  most  crafty, 
cautious,  and  servile  of  Abbes.  But 
the  greater  part  of  the  society  which 
Frederic  had  assembled  round  him, 
was  drawn  from  France.  Maupertuis 
had  acquired  some  celebrity  by  the 
journey  which  he  made  to  Lapland, 
for  the  purpose  of  ascertaining,  by 
actual  measurement,  the  shape  of  our 
planet.  He  was  placed  in  the  chair 
of  the  Academy  of  Berlin,  a  humble 
imitation  of  the  renowned  Academy  of 
Paris.  Baculard  D'Arnaud,  a  young 
poet,  who  was  thought  to  have  given 
promise  of  great  things,  had  been  in- 
duced to  quit  his  country,  and  to  reside 
at  the  Prussian  Court.  The  Marquess 
D'Argens  was  among  the  king's  favor- 
ite companions,  on  account,  as  it  should 
seem,  of  the  strong  opposition  between 
their  characters.  The  parts  of  D'Ar- 
gens were  good,  and  his  manners  those 
of  a  finished  French  gentleman ;  but 
his  whole  soul  was  dissolved  in  sloth, 
timidity,  and  self-indulgence.  His  was 
one  of  that  abject  class  of  minds  which 
are  superstitious  without  being  reli- 
gious. Hating  Christianity  with  a 
rancor  which  made  him  incapable  of 
rational  inquiry  :  unable  to  see  in  the 
harmony  and  beauty  of  the  universe 
the  traces  of  divine  power  and  wisdom, 
he  was  the  slave  of  dreams  and  omens ; 
— would  not  sit  down  to  table  with 
thirteen  in  company ;  turned  pale  if 
the  salt  fell  towards  him ;  begged  his 
guests  not  to  cross  their  knives  and 
forks  on  their  plates  ;  and  would  not 
for  the  world  commence  a  journey  on 
Friday.  His  health  was  a  subject  of 
constant  anxiety  to  him.  Whenever 
his  head  ached,  or  his  pulse  beat  quick, 
his  dastardly  fears  and  effeminate  pre- 


cautions were  the  jest  of  all  Berlin. 
All  this  suited  the  king's  purpose  ad 
mirably.  He  wanted  somebody  by 
whom  he  misrht  be  amused,  and  whom 

O  i 

he  might  despise.  When  he  wished  to 
pass  half-an-hour  in  easy  polished  con- 
versation, D'Argens  was  an  excellent 
companion;  when  he  wanted  to  vent 
his  spleen  and  contempt,  D'Argens  was 
an  excellent  butt. 

"With  these  associates,  and  others 
of  the  same  class,  Frederic  loved  to 
spend  the  time  which  he  could  steal 
from  public  cares.  He  wished  his  sup- 
per-parties to  be  gay  and  easy ;  and 
invited  his  guests  to  lay  aside  all  re- 
straint, and  to  forget  that  he  was  at 
the  head  of  a  hundred  and  sixty  thou- 
sand soldiers,  and  was  absolute  master 
of  the  life  and  liberty  of  all  who  sat 
at  meat  with  him.  There  was,  therefore, 
at  these  meetings  the  outward  show  of 
ease.  The  wit  and  learning  of  the 
company  were  ostentatiously  displayed. 
The  discussions  on  history  and  litera- 
ture were  often  highly  interesting. 
But  the  absurdity  of  all  the  religions 
known  among  men  was  the  chief  topic 
of  conversation  ;  and  the  audacity  with 
which  doctrines  and  names  venerated 
throughout  Christendom  were  treated 
on  these  occasions,  startled  even  per- 
sons accustomed  to  the  society  of 
French  and  English  free-thinkers. 
But  real  liberty,  or  real  affection,  was 
in  this  brilliant  society  not  to  be  found. 
Absolute  kino;s  seldom  have  friends  : 

O 

and  Frederic's  faults  were  such  as,  even 
where  perfect  equality  exists,  make 
friendship  exceedingly  precarious.  He 
had  indeed  many  qualities,  which,  on 
a  first  acquaintance,  were  captivating 
His  conversation  was  lively  ;  his  man 


FREDEEIC  II. 


65 


ners  to  those  whom  lie  desired  to  please 
were  even  caressing.  No  man  could 
flatter  with  more  delicacy.  No  man 
succeeded  more  completely  in  inspiring 
those  who  approached  him  with  vague 
hopes  of  some  great  advantage  from 
his  kindness.  But  under  this  fair  ex- 
terior he  was  a  tyrant — suspicious, 
disdainful,  and  malevolent. 

"  Potsdam  was,  in  truth,  what  it  was 
called  by  one  of  its  most  illustrious 
inmates,  the  Palace  of  Alcina.  At  the 
first  glance  it  seemed  to  be  a  delightful 
spot,  where  every  intellectual  and  phy- 
sical enjoyment  awaited  the  happy 
adventurer.  Every  new  comer  was 
received  with  eager  hospitality,  intoxi- 
cated with  flattery,  encouraged  to  ex- 
pect prosperity  and  greatness.  It  was 
in  vain  that  a  long  succession  of  favor- 
ites who  had  entered  that  abode  with 
delight  and  hope,  and  who,  after  a 
short  term  of  delusive  happiness,  had 
been  doomed  to  expiate  their  folly  by 
years  of  wretchedness  and  degradation, 
raised  their  voices  to  warn  the  aspirant 
who  approached  the  charmed  threshold. 
Some  had  wisdom  enough  to  discover 
the  truth  early,  and  spirit  enough  to 
fly  without  looking  back ;  others  lin- 
gered on  to  a  cheerless  and  unhonored 
old  age.  We  have  no  hesitation  in 
saying  that  the  poorest  author  of  that- 
time  in  London,  sleeping  on  a  bulk, 
dining  in  a  cellar,  with  a  cravat  of 
paper,  and  a  skewer  for  a  shirt-pin, 
was  a  happier  man  than  any  of  the 
literary  inmates  of  Frederic's  court. 

"But  of  all  who  entered  the  en- 
chanted garden  in  the  inebriation  of 
delight,  and  quitted  it  in  agonies  of 
rage  and  shame,  the  most  remarkable 
was  Voltaire.  ,  To  Berlin  he  was  in- 
9 


vited  by  a  series  of  letters,  couched  in 
terms  of  the  most  enthusiastic  friend- 
ship and  admiration.  For  once  the 
rigid  parsimony  of  Frederic  seemed  to 
have  relaxed.  Orders,  honorable  of- 
fices, a  liberal  pension,  a  well-served 
table,  stately  apartments  under  a  royal 
roof,  were  offered  in  return  for  the 
pleasure  and*  honor  which  were  expect- 
ed from  the  society  of  the  first  wit  of 
the  age.  A  thousand  louis  were  re- 
mitted for  the  charges  of  the  journey. 
No  ambassador  setting  out  from  Berlin 
for  a  court  of  the  first  rank,  had  ever 
been  more  amply  supplied.  But  Vol- 
taire was  not  satisfied.  At  a  later 
period,  when  he  possessed  an  ample  for- 
tune, he  was  one  of  the  most  liberal  of 
men;  but  till  his  means  had  become 
equal  to  his  wishes,  his  greediness  for 
lucre  was  unrestrained  either  by  jus- 
tice or  by  shame.  He  had  the  effron- 
tery to  ask  for  a  thousand  louis  more, 
in  order  to  enable  him  to  bring  his 
niece,  Madame  Denis,  the  ugliest  of  co- 
quettes, in  his  company.  The  indeli- 
cate rapacity  of  the  poet  produced  its 
natural  effect  on  the  severe  and  frugal 
king.  The  answer  was  a  dry  refusal. 
'  I  did  not,'  said  his  majesty,  '  solicit 
the  honor  of  a  lady's  society.'  On  this, 
Voltaire  went  off  into  a  paroxysm  of 
childish  rage.  '  Was  there  ever  such 
avarice?  He  has  hundreds  of  tubs 
full  of  dollars  in  his  vaults,  and  hag- 
gles with  me  about  a  poor  thousand 
louis.'  It  seemed  that  the  negotiation 
would  be  broken  off;  but  Frederic, 
with  great  dexterity,  affected  indiffer- 
ence, and  seemed  inclined  to  transfer 
his  idolatry  to  Baculard  d'Arnaud. 
His  majesty  even  wrote  some  bad 
verses,  of  which  the  sense  was,  that 


86 


FEEDEEIC  II. 


Voltaire  was  a  setting  sun,  and  that 
Arnaud  was  rising  Good-natured 
friends  soon  carried  the  lines  to  Vol- 
taire. He  was  in  his  bed.  He  jumped 
out  in  his  shirt,  danced  about  the  room 
with  rage,  and  sent  for  his  passport 
and  his  post-horses.  It  was  not  diffi- 
cult to  foresee  the  end  of  a  connection 
which  had  such  a  beginning. 

"It  was  in  the  year  1750  that  Vol- 
taire left  the  great  capital,  which  he 
was  not  to  see  again  till,  after  the  lapse 
of  nearly  thirty  years,  he  returned,  bow- 
ed down  by  extreme  old  age,  to  die  in 
the  midst  of  a  splendid  and  ghastly 
triumph.  His  reception  in  Prussia  was 
such  as  might  well  have  elated  a  less 
vain  and  excitable  mind.  He  wrote  to 
his  friends  at  Paris,  that  the  kindness 
and  the  attention  with  which  he  had 
been  welcomed  surpassed  description 
— that  the  king  was  the  most  amiable 
of  men — that  Potsdam  was  the  para- 
dise of  philosophers.  He  was  created 
chamberlain,  and  received,  together 
with  his  gold  key,  the  cross  of  an  order, 
and  a  patent  ensuring  to  him  a  pen- 
sion of  eight  hundred  pounds  sterling 
a-year  for  life.  A  hundred  and  sixty 
pounds  a-year  were  promised  to  his 
niece  if  she  survived  him.  The  royal 
cooks  and  coachmen  were  put  at  his 
disposal.  He  was  lodged  in  the  same 
apartments  in  which  Saxe  had  lived, 
when,  at  the  height  of  power  and  glory, 
he  visited  Prussia.  Frederic,  indeed, 
stooped  for  a  time  even  to  use  the  lan- 
guage of  adulation.  He  pressed  to  his 
lips  the  meagre  hand  of  the  little  grin- 
ning skeleton,  whom  he  regarded  as 
t»he  dispenser  of  immortal  renown.  He 
would  add,  he  said,  to  the  titles  which 
be  owed  to  his  ancestors  and  his  sword. 


another  title,  derived  from  his  last  and 
proudest  acquisition.  His  style  should 
run  thus : — Frederic,  King  of  Prussia, 
Margrave  of  Brandenburg,  Sovereign 
Duke  of  Silesia,  Possessor  of  Voltaire. 
But  even  amidst  the  delights  of  the 
honey-moon,  Voltaire's  sensitive  vanity 
began  to  take  alarm.  A  few  days  after 
his  arrival,  he  could  not  help  telling 
his  niece,  that  the  amiable  king  had  a 
trick  of  giving  a  sly  scratch  with  one 
hand  while  patting  and  stroking  with 
the  other.  Soon  came  hints  not  the 
less  alarming  because  mysterious.  '  The 
supper  parties  are  delicious.  The  king 
is  the  life  of  the  company.  But — I 
have  operas  and  comedies,  reviews  and 
concerts,  my  studies  and  books.  But — 
but — Berlin  is  fine,  the  princess  charm- 
ing, the  maids  of  honor  handsome. 

But, ' 

"This  eccentric  friendship  was  fast 
cooling.  Never  had  there  met  two  per- 
sons so  exquisitely  fitted  to  plague  each 
other.  Each  of  them  had  exactly  the 
fault  of  which  the  other  was  most  im- 
patient; and  they  were,  in  different 
ways,  the  most  impatient  of  mankind. 
Frederic  was  frugal,  almost  niggardly. 
When  he  had  secured  his  plaything, 
he  began  to  think  that  he  had  bought 
it  too  dear.  Voltaire,  on  the  other  hand, 
was  greedy,  even  to  the  extent  of  im 
pudence  and  knavery;  and  conceived 
that  the  favorite  of  a  monarch  who 
had  barrels  full  of  gold  and  silver  laid 
up  in  cellars,  ought  to  make  a  fortune, 
which  a  receiver-general  might  envy. 
They  soon  discovered  each  other's  feel- 
ings. Both  were  angry,  and  a  war  be- 
gan, in  which  Frederic  stooped  to  the 
part  >f  Harpagon,  and  Voltaire  to  that 
of  Scapin.  It  is  humiliating  to  relate, 


FREDERIC  IT. 


67 


that  the  great  warrior  and  statesman 
gave  orders  tliat  his  guest's  allowance 
jf  sugar  and  chocolate  should  be  cur- 
tailed. It  is,  if  possible,  a  still  more 
humiliating  fact,  that  Voltaire  indem- 
nified, himself  by  pocketing  the  wax- 
candles  in  the  royal  ante-chamber. 
Disputes  about  money,  however,  were 
not  the  most  serious  disputes  of  these 
extraordinary  associates.  The  sarcasms 
of  the  king  soon  galled  the  sensitive 
temper  of  the  poet.  D'Arnaud  and 
D'Argens,  Guichard  and  La  Metric, 
might,  for  the  sake  of  a  morsel  of  bread, 
be  willing  to  bear  the  insolence  of  a 
master;  but  Voltaire  was  of  another 
order.  He  knew  that  he  was  a  poten- 
tate as  well  as  Frederic ;  that  his  Eu- 
ropean reputation,  and  his  incompara- 
ble power  of  covering  whatever  he 
hated  with  ridicule,  made  him  an  ob- 
ject of  dread  even  to  the  leaders  of 
armies  and  the  rulers  of  nations.  In 
truth,  of  all  the  intellectual  weapons 
which  have  ever  been  wielded  by  man, 
the  most  terrible  was  the  mockery  of 
Voltaire.  Bigots  and  tyrants  who  had 
never  been  moved  by  the  wailing  and 
cursing  of  millions,  turned  pale  at  his 
name.  Principles  unassailable  by  rea- 
son, principles  which  had  withstood 
the  fiercest  attacks  of  power,  the  most 
valuable  truths,  the  most  generous  sen- 
timents, the  noblest  and  most  graceful 
images,  the  purest  reputations,  the 
most  august  institutions,  began  to  look 
mean  and  loathsome  as  soon  as  that 
withering  smile  was  turned  upon 
them.  To  every  opponent,  how- 
ever strong  in  his  cause  and  his  tal- 
ents, in  his  station  and  his  character, 
who  ventured  to  encounter  the  great 
scoffer,  might  be  addressed  the  caution 


which  was  given  of  old  to  the  Arch 
angel : 

1 1  forewarn  thee,  shun 
His  deadly  arrow  ;  neither  vainly  hope 
To  be  invulnerable  in  those  bright  arms, 
Though  temper'd  heavenly;  for  that  fatal  dint, 
Save  Him  who  reigns  above,  none  can  resist.' 

"  We  cannot  pause  to  recount  how 
often  that  rare  talent  was  exercised 
against  rivals  worthy  of  esteem — how 
often  it  was  used  to  crush  and  torture 
enemies  worthy  only  of  silent  disdain 
— how  often  it  was  perverted  to  the 
more  noxious  purpose  of  destroying 
the  last  solace  of  earthly  misery,  and 
the  last  restraint  on  earthly  power. 
Neither  can  we  pause  to  tell  how  often 
it  was  used  to  vindicate  justice,  hu- 
manity, and  toleration — the  principles 
of  sound  philosophy,  the  principles  of 
free  government.  Causes  of  quarrel 
multiplied  fast.  Voltaire,  who,  partly 
from  love  of  money,  and  partly  from 
love  of  excitement,  was  always  fond  of 
stock-jobbing,  became  implicated  in 
transactions  of  at  least  a  dubious  char- 
acter. The  king  was  delighted  at  hav- 
ing such  an  opportunity  to  humble 
his  guest;  and  bitter  reproaches  and 
complaints  were  exchanged.  Voltaire, 
too,  was  soon  at  war  with  the  other 
men  of  letters  who  surrounded  the 
king ;  and  this  irritated  Frederic,  who, 
however,  had  himself  chiefly  to  blame : 
for,  from  that  love  of  tormenting  which 
was  in  him  a  ruling  passion,  he  per- 
petually lavished  extravagant  praises 
on  small  men  and  bad  books,  merely 
in  order  that  he  might  enjoy  the  mor- 
tification and  rage  which  on  such  oc- 
casions Voltaire  took  no  pains  to  con- 
ceal. His  majesty,  however,  soon  had 
reason  to  regret  the  pains  which  he 


88 


FKEDEEIC  II. 


had  taken  to  kindle  jealousy  among 
the  members  of  his  household.  The 
whole  palace  was  in  a  ferment  with 
literary  intrigues  and  cabals.  It  was 
to  no  purpose  that  the  imperial  voice, 
which  kept  a  hundred  and  sixty  thou- 
sand soldiers  in  order,  was  raised  to 
quiet  the  contention  of  the  exasperated 
wits.  It  was  far  easier  to  stir  up  such 
a  storm  than  to  lull  it.  Nor  was  Fred- 
eric, in  his  capacity  of  wit,  by  any  means 
without  his  own  share  of  vexations. 
He  had  sent  a  large  quantity  of  verses 
to  Voltaire,  and  requested  that  they 
might  be  returned,  with  remarks  and 
correction.  '  See,'  exclaimed  Voltaire, 
'  what  a  quantity  of  his  dirty  linen  the 
king  has  sent  me  to  wash ! '  Talebear- 
ers were  not  wanting  to  carry  the  sar- 
casm to  the  royal  ear;  and  Frederic 
was  as  much  incensed  as  a  Grub  Street 
writer  who  had  found  his  name  in  the 
'  Dunciad.' 

"This  could  not  last.  A  circumstance 
which,  when  the  mutual  regard  of  the 
friends  was  in  its  first  glow,  would 
merely  have  been  matter  for  laughter, 
produced  a  violent  explosion.  Mau- 
pertuis  enjoyed  as  much  of  Frederic's 
good-will  as  any  man  of  letters.  He 
was  president  of  the  Academy  of  Ber- 
lin; and  stood  second  to  Voltaire, 
though  at  an  immense  distance,  in  the 
literary  society  which  had  been  assem- 
bled at  the  Prussian  court.  Frederic 
had,  by  playing  for  his  own  amusement 
on  the  feelings  of  the  two  jealous  and 
vainglorious  Frenchmen,  succeeded  in 
producing  a  bitter  enmity  between 
them.  Voltaire  resolved  to  set  his 
mark,  a  mark  never  to  be  effaced,  on 
the  forehead  of  Maupertuis ;  and  wrote 
the  exquisitely  ludicrous  diatribe  of 


"Doctor  Akakia."  He  showed  this 
little  piece  to  Frederick,  who  had  toe 
much  taste  and  too  much  malice  not 
to  relish  such  delicious  pleasantry.  In 
truth,  even  at  this  time  of  day,  it  is 
not  easy  for  any  person  who  has  the 
least  perception  of  the  ridiculous  to 
read  the  jokes  on  the  Latin  city,  the 
Patagonians,  and  the  hole  to  the  centre 
of  the  earth,  without  laughing  till  he 
cries.  But  though  Frederic  was  di 
verted  by  this  charming  pasquinade, 
he  was  unwilling  that  it  should  get 
abroad.  His  self-love  was  interested. 
He  had  selected  Maupertuis  to  fill  the 
chair  of  his  Academy.  If  all  Europe 
were  taught  to  laugh  at  Maupertuis, 
would  not  the  reputation  of  the  Aca- 
demy, would  not  even  the  dignity  of 
its  royal  patron,  be  in  some  degree 
compromised?  The  king,  therefore, 
begged  Voltaire  to  suppress  his  per- 
formance. Voltaire  promised  to  do  so, 
and  broke  his  word.  The  diatribe  was 
published,  and  received  with  shouts 
of  merriment  and  applause  by  all  who 
could  read  the  French  language.  The 
king  stormed.  Voltaire,  with  his 
usual  disregard  of  truth,  protested  his 
innocence,  and  made  up  some  lie  about 
a  printer  or  an  amanuensis.  The  king 
was  not  to  be  so  imposed  upon.  He 
ordered  the  pamphlet  to  be  burned  by 
the  common  hangman,  and  insisted 
upon  having  an  apology  from  Voltaire, 
couched  in  the  most  abject  terms. 
Voltaire  sent  back  to  the  king  his 
cross,  his  key,  and  the  patent  of  his 
pension.  After  this  burst  of  rage,  the 
strange  pair  began  to  be  ashamed  of 
their  violence,  and  went  through  the 
forms  of  reconciliation.  But  the 
breach  was  irreparable ;  and  Voltaire 


FKEDEEIO  II. 


took  liis  leave  of  Frederic  for  ever. 
They  parted  with  cold  civility;  but 
their  hearts  were  big  with  resentment. 
Voltaire  had  in  his  keeping  a  volume 
of  the  king's  poetry,  and  forgot  to  re- 
turn it.  This  was,  we  believe,  merely 
one  of  the  oversights  which  men  set- 
ting out  upon  a  journey  often  commit. 
That  Voltaire  could  have  meditated 
plagiarism  is  quite  incredible.  He 
would  not,  we  are  confident,  for  the 
half  of  Frederic's  kingdom,  have  con- 
sented to  father  Frederic's  verses.  The 
king,  however,  who  rated  his  own 
writings  much  above  their  value,  and 
who  was  inclined  to  see  all  Voltaire's 
actions  in  the  worst  light,  was  enraged 
to  think  that  his  favorite  compositions 
were  in  the  hands  of  an  enemy,  as 
thievish  as  a  daw  and  as  mischievous 
as  a  monkey.  In  the  anger  excited  by 
this  thought,  he  lost  sight  of  reason 
and  decency,  and  determined  on  com- 
mitting an  outrage  at  once  odious  and 
ridiculous 

"Voltaire  had  reached  Frankfort. 
His  niece,  Madam  Denis,  came  thither 
to  meet  him.  He  conceived  himself 
secure  from  the  power  of  his  late 
master,  when  he  was  arrested  by  order 
of  the  Prussian  resident.  The  pre- 
cious volume  was  delivered  up.  But 
the  Prussian  agents  had,  no  doubt, 
been  instructed  not  to  let  Voltaire 
escape  without  some  gross  indignity. 
He  was  confined  twelve  days  in  a 
wretched  hovel.  Sentinels  with  fixed 
bayonets  kept  guard  over  him.  His 
niece  was  dragged  through  the  mire 
by  the  soldiers.  Sixteen  hundred  dol- 
lars were  extorted  from  him  by  his 
insolent  jailers.  It  is  absurd  to  say 
that  this  outrage  is  not  to  be  attri- 


buted to  the  king.  "Was  anybody 
punished  for  it  ?  Was  anybody  called 
in  question  for  it  ?  Was  it  not  consist- 
ent with  Frederic's  character  ?  Was  it 
not  of  a  piece  with  his  conduct  on 
other  similar  occasions  ?  Is  it  not  no- 
torious that  he  repeatedly  gave  private 
directions  to  his  officers  to  pillage  and 
demolish  the  houses  of  persons  against 
whom  he  had  a  grudge — charging  them 
at  the  same  time  to  take  their  meas- 
ures in  such  a  way  that  his  name  might 
not  be  compromised?  He  acted  thus 
towards  Count  Buhl  in  the  Seven 
Years'  War.  Why  should  we  believe 
that  he  would  have  been  more  scru- 
pulous with  regard  to  Voltaire  ? " 

Turning  from  this  exhibition  of  dis- 
creditable royal  vanity  and  meanness, 
we  may  with  more  satisfaction  look 
upon  the  service  of  Frederic  to  the 
state  in  its  civil  as  well  as  military 
development,  and  study  the  real  great- 
ness of  this  extraordinary  man.  In 
the  cause  of  education  he  was  active, 
both  by  favoring  the  universities,  to 
which  he  sought  to  secure  the  services 
of  the  best  professors,  and  by  the  es- 
tablishment of  schools  wherever  the 
circumstances  of  the  neighborhood 
rendered  it  desirable.  It  is  said 
that  he  sometimes  founded  as  many 
as  sixty  schools  in  a  single  year. 
This  period  of  his  reign  is  alsc 
marked  by  the  commencement  of  that 
revision  of  the  Prussian  law  (a  con- 
fused and  corrupt  mixture  of  Roman 
and  Saxon  jurisprudence)  which  led 
to  the  substitution  of  an  entirely  new 
code.  In  this  important  business  the 
Chancellor  Cocceii  took  the  lead;  but 
the  system  established  by  him  under- 
went considerable  alterations  from 


70 


FKEDEK1C  IL 


time  to  time,  and  at  last  was  remodel- 
led in  1781.  For  the  particular  merits 
or  imperfections  of  the  code,  the  law- 
yers who  drew  it  up  are  answerable, 
rather  than  the  monarch ;  but  the  lat- 
ter possesses  the  high  honor  of  having 
proved  himself,  in  this  and  other  in- 
stances, sincerely  desirous  to  assure  to 
his  subjects  a  pure  and  ready  adminis- 
tration of  justice.  Sometimes  this  de- 
sire joined  to  a  certain  love  and  habit 
of  personal  inquiry  into  all  things,  led 
the  king  to  a  meddling  and  mischiev- 
ous interference  with  the  course  of  jus- 
tice ;  but  in  all  cases  his  intention  seems 
to  have  been  pure,  and  his  conduct 
proves  him  sincere  in  the  injunction  to 
his  judges : — "  If  a  suit  arises  between 
me  and  one  of  my 'subjects,  and  the 
case  is  a  doubtful  one,  you  should  al- 
ways decide  against  me."  If,  as  in  the 
celebrated  imprisonment  of  Baron 
Trenck,  he  chose  to  perform  an  arbi- 
trary action,  he  did  it  openly,  not  by 
tampering  with  courts  of  justice:  but 
these  despotic  measures  were  not  fre- 
quent, and  few  countries  have  ever 
enjoyed  a  fuller  practical  license  of 
speech  and  printing,  than  Prussia  un- 
der a  simply  despotic  form  of  govern- 
ment, administered  by  a  prince  natu- 
rally of  impetuous  passions  and  stern 
and  unforgiving  temper.  That  temper, 
however,  was  kept  admirably  within 
bounds,  and  seldom  suffered  to  appear 
in  civil  affairs.  His  code  is  remark- 
able for  the  abolition  of  torture,  and 
the  toleration  granted  to  all  religions. 
The  latter  enactment,  however,  re- 
quired no  great  share  of  liberality 
from  Frederic,  who  avowed  his  indif- 
ference to  all  religions  alike.  In  crim- 
inal cases  he  was  opposed  to  severe 


punishments,  and  was  always  strongly 
averse  to  shedding  blood.  To  his  sub 
jects,  both  in  person  and  by  letter,  he 
was  always  accessible,  and  to  the  peas- 
antry in  particular  he  displayed  pater- 
nal kindness,  patience,  and  condescen- 
sion. But,  on  the  other  hand,  his  mili- 
tary system  was  frightfully  severe; 
both  in  its  usual  discipline  and  in  its 
punishments.  Numbers  of  soldiers  de- 
serted, or  put  an  end  to  their  lives,  or 
committed  crimes  that  they  might  be 
given  up  to  justice.  Yet  his  kindness 
and  familiarity  in  the  field,  and  his 
fearless  exposure  of  his  own  person, 
endeared  him  exceedingly  to  his  sol- 
diers, and  many  pleasing  anecdotes, 
honorable  to  both  parties,  are  pre- 
served, especially  during  the  cam- 
paigns of  the  Seven  Years'  War. 

During  this  peace  Austria  had  re 
cruited  her  strength,  and  with  it  her 
inveterate  hostility  to  Prussia ;  and  it 
became  known  to  Frederic  that  a  se- 
cret agreement  for  the  con  piest  and 
partition  of  his  territories  existed  be- 
tween Austria,  Russia,  and  Saxony. 
The  circumstances  of  the  times  were 
such  that,  though  neither  France  nor 
England  were  cordially  disposed  to- 
wards him,  it  was  yet  open  to  him  to 
negotiate  an  alliance  with  either. 
Frederic  chose  that  of  England ;  and 
France,  forgetting  ancient  enmities, 
and  her  obvious  political  interest,  im- 
mediately took  part  with  Austria. 
The  odds  of  force  apparently  were 
overwhelming;  but,  having  made  up 
his  mind,  the  King  of  Prussia  dis- 
played his  usual  promptitude.  He 
demanded  an  explanation  of  the  views 
of  the  court  of  Vienna,  and,  on  receiv- 
ing an  unsatisfactory  answer,  signified 


FREDERIC  II. 


71 


that  lie  considered  it  a  declaration  of 
war.  Knowing  that  the  court  of 
Saxony,  contrary  to  existing  treaties, 
flras  secretly  engaged  in  the  league 
against  him,  he  marched  an  army  into 
the  electorate  in  August,  1756,  and, 

o  /  /  / 

almost  unopposed,  took  military  pos- 
session of  it.  He  thus  turned  the 
enemy's  resources  against  himself,  and 
drew  from  that  unfortunate  country 
continual  supplies  of  men  and  money, 
without  which  he  could  scarcely  have 
supported  the  protracted  struggle 
which  ensued,  and  which  is  celebrated 
under  the  title  of  the  Seven  Years' 
War.  The  events  of  this  war,  how- 
ever interesting  to  a  military  student, 
are  singularly  unfit  for  concise  narra- 
tion, and  that  from  the  very  circum- 
stances which  displayed  the  King  of 
Prussia's  talents  to  most  advantage. 
Attacked  on  every  side,  compelled  to 
hasten  from  the  pursuit  of  a  beaten, 
to  make  head  in  some  other  quarter 
against  a  threatening  enemy,  the  ac- 
tivity, vigilance,  and  indomitable  reso- 
lution of  Frederic  must  strike  all 
those  who  read  these  campaigns  at 
length,  and  with  the  necessary  help  of 
maps  and  plans,  though  his  profound 
tactical  skill  and  readiness  in  emergen- 
cies may  be  fully  appreciable  only  by 
the  learned.  But  when  these  compli- 
cated events  are  reduced  to  a  bare  list 
of  marches  and  countermarches,  vic- 
tories and  defeats,  the  spirit  vanishes, 
and  a  mere  caput  mortuum  remains. 
The  war  being  necessarily  defensive, 
Frederic  could  seldom  carry  the  seat 
of  action  into  an  enemy's  country. 
The  Prussian  dominions  were  subject 
to  continual  ravage,  and  that  country, 
as  well  as  Saxony,  paid  a  heavy  price 


that  the  possession  of  Silesia  might  be 
decided  between  two  rival  sovereigns. 
Upon  the  whole,  the  first  campaigns 
were  favorable  to  Prussia;  but  the 
confessed  superiority  of  that  power  in 
respect  of  generals  (for  the  king  was 
admirably  supported  by  Prince  Fer- 
dinand of  Brunswick,  Prince  Henry  of 
Prussia,  Schwerin,  Keith,  and  others) 
could  not  always  countervail  the  great 
superiority  of  force  with  which  it  had 
to  contend.  The  celebrated  victory 
won  by  the  Prussians  at  Prague,  May 
6th,  1757,  was  balanced  by  a  severe  de- 
feat at  Kolin,  the  result,  as  Frederic 
confesses,  of  his  own  rashness ;  but,  at 
the  end  of  autumn,  he  retrieved  the 
reverses  of  the  summer,  by  the  bril- 
liant victories  of  Rosbach,  and  Leu- 
then  or  Lissa.  In  1758,  Frederic's 
contempt  of  his  enemy  lulled  him  into 
a  false  security,  in  consequence  of 
which  he  was  surprised  and  defeated 
at  Hochkirchen.  But  the  campaigns 
of  1759  and  1760  were  a  succession  ot 
disasters  by  which  Prussia  was  reduced 
to  the  verge  of  ruin ;  and  it  appears, 
from  Frederic's  correspondence,  that, 
in  the  autumn  of  the  latter  year,  his 
reverses  led  him  to  contemplate  sui- 
cide, in  preference  to  consenting  to 
what  he  thought  dishonorable  terms 
of  peace.  The  next  campaign  was 
bloody  and  indecisive ;  and  in  the  fol- 
lowing year  the  secession  of  Russia 
and  France  induced  Austria,  then 
much  exhausted,  to  consent  to  a  peace, 
by  which  Silesia  and  the  other  posses- 
sions of  Frederic  were  secured  to  him 
as  he  possessed  them  before  the  war 
So  that  this  enormous  expense  of  blood 
and  treasure  produced  no  result  what- 
ever, except  that  of  establishing  the 


72 


FEEDEEIC  11. 


King  of  Prussia's  reputation  as  the 
first  living  general  of  Europe.  Peace 
was  signed  at  the  castle  of  Huberts- 
burg,  near  Dresden,  Feb.  15th,  1763. 

The  brilliant  military  reputation 
which  Frederic  had  acquired  in  this 
arduous  contest  did  not  tempt  him  to 
pursue  the  career  of  a  conqueror.  He 
had  risked  everything  to  maintain  pos- 
session of  Silesia ;  but  if  his  writings 
speak  the  real  feelings  of  his  mind,  he 
was  deeply  sensible  to  the  sufferings 
and  evils  which  attend  upon  war. 
"The  state  of  Prussia,"  he  himself 
says,  in  the  "  Histoire  de  mon  Temps," 
"can  only  be  compared  to  that  of  a 
man  riddled  with  wounds,  weakened 
by  loss  of  blood,  and  ready  to  sink 
under  the  weight  of  his  misfortunes. 
The  nobility  was  exhausted,  the  com- 
mons ruined,  numbers  of  villages  were 
burnt,  of  towns  ruined.  Civil  order 
was  lost  in  a  total  anarchy :  in  a  word, 
the  desolation  was  universal."  To  cure 
these  evils  Frederic  applied  his  earn- 
est attention ;  and  by  grants  of  money 
to  those  towns  which  had  suffered 
most ;  by  the  commencement  and  con- 
tinuation of  various  great  works  of 
public  utility ;  by  attention  to  agricul- 
ture ;  by  draining  marshes,  and  settling 
colonists  in  the  barren,  or  ruined  por- 
tions of  his  country;  by  cherishing 
manufactures  (though  not  always  with 
a  useful  or  judicious  zeal),  he  succeed- 
ed in  repairing  the  exhausted  popula- 
tion and  resources  of  Prussia  with  a 
rapidity  the  more  wonderful,  because 
his  military  establishment  was  at  the 
same  time  recruited  and  maintained 
at  the  enormous  number,  considering 
the  size  and  wealth  of  the  kingdom, 
of  200,000  men.  One  of  his  measures 


deserves  especial  notice,  the  emancipa 
tion  of  the  peasants  from  hereditary 
servitude.  This  great  undertaking  he 
commenced  at  an  early  period  of  his 
reign,  by  giving  up  his  own  seignioral 
rights  over  the  serfs  on  the  crown  do 
mains:  he  completed  it  in  the  yeai 
1766,  by  an  edict  abolishing  servitude 
throughout  his  dominions.  In  1765, 
he  commenced  a  gradual  alteration  in 
the  fiscal  system  of  Prussia,  suggested 
in  part  by  the  celebrated  HelvetiuS: 
In  the  department  of  finance,  though 
all  his  experiments  did  not  succeed,  he 
was  very  successful.  He  is  said,  in  the 
course  of  his  reign,  to  have  raised  the 
annual  revenue  to  nearly  double  what 
it  had  been  in  h>s  father's  time,  and 
that  without  increasing  the  pressure 
of  the  people. 

In  such  rares  and  in  his  literary 
pursuits,  among  which  we  may  espe- 
cially mention  his  "History  of  the 
Seven  Years'  War,"  passed  the  time  of 
Frederic  for  ten  years.  In  1772,  he 
engaged  in  the  nefarious  project  for 
the  first  partition  of  Poland.  It  does 
not  seem,  however,  that  the  scheme 
originated,  as  has  been  said,  with 
Frederic:  on  the  contrary,  it  appears 
to  have  been  conceived  by  Catherine 
II.,  and  matured  in  conversations  with 
Prince  Henry,  the  King  of  Prussia's 
brother,  during  a  visit  to  St.  Peters- 
burg. By  the  treaty  of  partition, 
which  was  not  finally  arranged  till 
1777,  Prussia  gained  a  territory  of  no 
great  extent,  but  of  importance  from 
its  connecting  Prussia  Proper  with  the 
electoral  dominions  of  Brandenburg 
and  Silesia,  and  giving  a  compactness 
to  the  kingdom,  of  which  it  stood 
greatly  in  need.  Frederic  made  some 


FREDERIC  II. 


73 


amends  for  his  conduct  in  this  matter, 
by  the  diligence  with  which  he  labored 
to  improve  his  acquisition.  In  this, 
as  in  most  circumstances  of  internal 
administration,  he  was  very  successful ; 
and  the  country,  ruined  by  war,  mis- 
government,  and  the  brutal  sloth  of 
its  inhabitants,  soon  assumed  the  as- 
pect of  cheerful  industry. 

The  King  of  Prussia  once  more  led 
an  army  into  the  field,  when,  on  the 
death  of  the  Elector  of  Bavaria,  child- 
less, in  1778,  Joseph  II.  of  Austria 
conceived  the  plan  of  re-annexing  to 
his  own  crown,  under  the  plea  of  vari- 
ous antiquated  feudal  rights,  the  great- 
er part  of  the  Bavarian  territories. 
Stimulated  quite  as  much  by  jealousy 
of  Austria,  as  by  a  sense  of  the  injus- 
tice of  this  act,  Frederic  stood  out  as 
the  assertor  of  the  liberties  of  Ger- 
many, and  proceeding  with  the  utmost 
politeness  from  explanation  to  expla- 
nation, he  marched  an  army  into  Bo- 
hemia in  July,  1778.  The  war,  how- 
ever, which  was  terminated  in  the  fol- 
lowing spring  by  the  peace  of  Teschen, 
was  one  of  manoeuvres,  and  partial  en- 
gagements; in  which  Frederic's  skill 
in  strategy  shone  with  its  usual  lustre, 
and  success,  on  the  whole,  rested  with 
the  Prussians.  By  the  terms  of  the 
treaty,  the  Bavarian  dominions  were 
secured,  nearly  entire,  to  the  rightful 
collateral  heirs,  whose  several  claims 
were  settled,  while  certain  minor  stip- 
ulations were  made  in  favor  of  Prussia. 

A  few  years  later,  in  1785,  Frederic 
again  found  occasion  to  oppose  Aus- 
tria, in  defence  of  the  integrity  of  the 
Germanic  constitution.  The  Emperor 
Joseph,  in  prosecution  of  his  designs 
on  Bavaria,  had  formed  a  contract 
10 


with  the  reigning  elector,  to  exchange 
the  Austrian  provinces  in  the  Nether- 
lands for  the  Electorate.  Dissenting 
from  this  arrangement,  the  heir  to  the 
succession  entrusted  the  advocacy  of 
his  rights  to  Frederic,  who  lost  no 
time  in  negotiating  a  confederation 
among  the  chief  powers  of  Germany, 
(known  by  the  name  of  the  Germanic 
League,)  to  support  the  constitution 
of  the  empire,  and  the  rights  of  its 
several  princes.  By  this  timely  step 
Austria  was  compelled  to  forego  the 
desired  acquisition. 

At  this  time  Frederic's  constitution 
had  begun  to  decay.  He  had  long 
been  a  sufferer  from  gout,  the  natural 
consequence  of  indulgence  in  good  eat- 
ing  and  rich  cookery,  to  which  through- 
out his  life  he  was  addicted.  Towards 
the  end  of  the  year  he  began  to  experi- 
ence great  difficulty  of  breathing.  His 
complaints,  aggravated  by  total  neglect 
of  medical  advice,  and  an  extravagant 
appetite,  which  he  gratified  by  eating 
to  excess  of  the  most  highly  seasoned 
and  unwholesome  food,  terminated  in 
a  confirmed  dropsy.  During  the  lat- 
ter months  of  his  life  he  suffered  griev- 
ously from  this  complication  of  disor- 
ders ;  and  through  this  period  he  dis- 
displayed  remarkable  patience,  and 
consideration  for  the  feelings  of  those 
around  him.  No  expression  of  suffer- 
ing was  allowed  to  pass  his  lips ;  and 
up  to  the  last  day  of  his  life  he  con- 
tinued to  discharge  with  punctuality 
those  political  duties  which  he  had  im- 
posed upon  himself  in  youth  and 
strength.  Strange  to  say,  while  he  ex- 
hibited this  extraordinary  self-control 
in  some  respects,  he  would  not  abstain 
from  the  most  extravagant  excesses  in 


FREDERIC   II. 


diet,  though  they  were  almost  always 
followed  by  a  severe  aggravation  of  his 
sufferings.  Up  to  August  15th,  1786, 
ne  continued,  as  usual,  to  receive  and 
answer  all  communications,  and  to  des- 
patch the  usual  routine  of  civil  and 
military  business.  On  the  following 
day  he  fell  into  a  lethargy,  from  which 
he  only  partially  recovered.  He  died 
in  the  course  of  the  night  of  August  16. 

The  published  works  of  the  King  of 
Prussia  were  collected  in  twenty-three 
volumes,  8vo.  Amsterdam,  1790.  We 
shall  here  mention,  as  completing  the 
body  of  his  historical  works,  the  "  Me- 
moires  depuis  la  Paix  de  Huberts- 
bourg,"  and  "Memoires  de  la  Guerre 
de  1778."  Among  his  poems,  the  most 
remarkable  is  the  "  Art  de  la  Guerre ; " 
but  these,  as  happens  in  most  cases, 
where  the  writer  has  thought  fit  to  em- 
ploy a  foreign  language,  have  been  lit- 
tle known  or  esteemed,  since  their  au- 
thor ceased  to  rivet  the  attention  of 
the  world  by  the  brilliance  of  his  ac- 
tions, and  the  singularity  of  his  char- 
acter. 

Of  the  personal  appearance  of  the 
king,  Old  Fritz,  as  he  was  familiarly 
called  by  the  people,  we  have  this 
graphic  sketch  by  his  latest  biographer, 
Carlyle :  "  A  king  every  inch  of  him, 
though  without  the  trappings  of  a  king. 
Presents  himself  in  a  Spartan  simplicity 
of  vesture ;  no  crown  but  an  old  mili- 
tary cocked-hat;  no  sceptre  but  one 
like  Agamemnon's,  a  walking-stick  out 
of  the  woods,  which  serves  also  as  a 
riding-stick;  and  for  royal  robes,  a 
mere  soldier's  blue  coat  with  red  fa- 
3mgs,  coat  likely  to  be  old,  and  sure  to 


have  a  great  deal  of  Spanish  snuff  on 
the  breast  of  it;  rest  of  the  apparel 
dim,  unobtrusive  in  color  or  cut,  end- 
ing in  high,  over-knee,  military  boots, 
which  may  be  brushed,  but  are  not 
permitted  to  be  blackened  or  varnish- 
ed. The  man  is  not  of  godlike  phy- 
siognomy, any  more  than  of  imposing 
stature  or  costume :  close  shut  mouth 
with  thin  lips,  prominent  jaws  and 
nose,  receding  brow,  by  no  means  of 
Olympian  height;  head,  however,  is 
of  long  form  and  has  superlative  gray 
eyes  in  it.  Not  what  is  called  a  beau- 
tiful man,  nor  yet,  by  all  appearance 
what  is  called  a  happy  one.  On  the 
contrary,  the  face  bears  evidence  of 
many  sorrows,  as  they  are  termed,  of 
much  hard  labor  done  in  this  world ; 
and  seems  to  anticipate  nothing  but 
more  still  coming.  Quiet  stoicism,  ca- 
pable enough  of  what  joy  there  were, 
but  not  expecting  any  worth  mention  ; 
great  unconscious  and  some  conscious 
pride,  well  tempered  with  a  cheery 
mockery  of  humor,  —  are  written  on 
that  old  face;  which  carries  its  chin 
well  forward,  in  spite  of  the  slight 
stoop  about  the  neck ;  snuffy  nose  ra- 
ther flung  into  the  air,  under  its  old 
cocked-hat, — like  an  old  snuffy  lion 
on  the  watch ;  and  such  a  pair  of  eyes 
as  no  man  or  lion  or  lynx  of  that  cen- 
tury bore  elsewhere,  according  to  all 
the  testimony  we  have."* 


*  The  main  portion  of  this  narrative  is  from 
the  "Gallery  of  Portraits  and  Memoirs,"  pub- 
lished under  the  superintendence  of  the  ; '  So- 
ciety for  the  Diffusion  of  Useful  Knowledge." 
The  episode  on  the  intimacy  of  the  sovereign 
with  Voltaire  is  from  Macaulay's  article  on 
Frederic  in  the  Edinburgh  Review. 


EDWARD    GIBBON 


IBBON  has  so  well  told  the  story 
~  of  his  life  in  Ms  memorable  Auto- 
biography, that  subsequent  writers  in 
their  account  of  the  man,  including  his 
editor,  the  persevering  Milman,  have 
had  no  other  course  to  pursue  than  to 
follow  closely  the  details  of  his  narra- 
tive. The  Autobiography  is  indeed  an 
extraordinary  production  among  the 
works  of  its  class.  Its  style  is  charm- 
ing, with  just  enough  of  that  elevation 
which  gives  such  peculiar  emphasis  to 
the  author's  great  work  to  impart  to  or- 
dinary incidents  a  certain  indescribable 
animation  which  we  can  find  nowhere 
more  agreeably  displayed.  Written  evi- 
dently with  the  consciousness  of  the 
value  of  his  "  History  "  to  the  world, 
it  unfolds  to  us  the  processes  of  acci- 
dent or  study  by  which  he  gradually 
reached  that  great  work.  It  was  not 
till  he  felt  that  he  had  some  claims 
upon  the  attention  of  the  world  by  the 
completion  of  the  History  that  he  un- 
dertook the  preparation  of  his  personal 
memoir ;  and  he  proceeded  in  it  with 
so  much  care  that  he  left  for  his  friend 
and  literary  executor,  Lord  Sheffield, 
no  less  than  six  different  sketches  of 
the  work,  all  in  his  own  handwriting. 
From  all  of  these,  the  "  Memoirs,"  as 


they  now  staled,  were  constructed. 
Their  motive  is  expressed  in  a  few 
opening  sentences,  revealing  at  the 
start  a  certain  pride  of  authorship  and 
sense  of  the  importance  of  the  task ; 
egotistical,  of  course,  for  to  be  success- 
ful in  literary  compositions  one  must 
be  in  love  with  his  subject,  so  that  a 
man  who  undertakes  to  write  his  au- 
tobiography should  be  first  assured 
that  he  is  in  love  with  himself.  If 
this  were  the  only  qualification,  how 
ever,  it  must  be  admitted  there  would 
be  few  failures  in  productions  of 
this  class.  "  In  the  fifty-second  year  of 
my  age,"  Gibbon  commences,  "after 
the  completion  of  an  arduous  and  suc- 
cessful work,  I  now  propose  to  employ 
some  moments  of  my  leisure  in  review- 
ing the  simple  transactions  of  a  private 
and  literary  life.  Truth,  naked,  un- 
blushing truth,  the  first  virtue  of  more 
serious  history,  must  be  the  sole  re- 
commendation of  this  personal  narra. 
tive.  The  style  shall  be  simple  and 
familiar:  but  style  is  the  image  of 
character;  and  the  habits  of  correct 
writing  may  produce,  without  labor  or 
design,  the  appearance  of  art  and  study. 
My  own  amusement  is  my  motive,  and 
will  be  my  reward :  and  if  these  sheets 

(75) 


76 


EDWARD   GIBBON. 


are  communicated  to  some  discreet  and 
indulgent  friends,  they  will  be  secreted 
from  the  public  eye  till  the  author  shall 
be  removed  beyond  the  reach  of  criti- 
cism or  ridicule." 

Following  then  this  best  authority, 
the  historian  himself,  we  ascend  with 
him  in  the  records  of  his  ancestry  to 
the  eleventh  century,  when  the  Gib- 
bons of  Kent  flourished  in  that  old 
English  county.  One  of  the  family 
was  architect  or  castle-builder  of  King 
Edward  III. ;  another,  was  captain  of 
the  English  militia  in  the  reign  of  Eli- 
zabeth. An  alliance  by  marriage  con- 
nected the  historian,  in  the  eleventh 
degree,  with  a  Lord  High  Treasurer  of 
England  of  the  days  of  Henry  VI.,  the 
historic  Baron  Say  and  Seale  who  was 
beheaded  by  the  insurgents  in  the 
Kentish  Rebellion,  and  who,  in  Shake- 
speare's play  is  reproached  by  Jack 
Cade  with  erecting  a  grammar  school, 
setting  printers  at  work,  building  a 
paper  mill,  and  having  men  about  him 
"  who  usually  talk  with  a  noun  and  a 
verb,  and  such  abominable  words  as 
no  Christian  ear  can  endure  to  hear." 
"  Our  dramatic  poet,"  writes  the  his- 
torian of  the  Roman  Empire  "  is  gene- 
rally more  attentive  to  character  than 
to  history ;  and  I  much  fear  that  the 
art  of  printing  was  not  introduced  into 
England  till  several  years  after  Lord 
Say's  death :  but  of  some  of  these  me- 
ritorious crimes  I  should  hope  to  find 
my  ancestors  guilty;  and  a  man  of 
letters  may  be  proud  of  his  descent 
from  a  patron  and  martyr  of  learning." 

At  the  beginning  of  the  seventeenth 
century  a  branch  of  the  family  settled 
in  London  in  mercantile  life  and  pros- 
pered, Edward,  the  grandfather  of  the 


historian,  acquiring  wealth  as  a  draper 
and  rising  to  a  government  appoint- 
ment as  one  of  the  commissioners  of 
the  customs.     Unhappily  he  became  ? 
director  of  the  South  Sea  Company, 
and  his  previous  fortune  of  sixty  thou 
sand  pounds  was  lost  in  the  wreck  of 
that  extraordinary  speculation.      Es- 
caping from  his  creditors  with  a  small 
allowance,  he  was  however  enabled  by 
his  energy  to  repair  his  losses  and  be- 
come again  a  man  of  consideration  for 
his  property.     His  son  Edward  was 
educated  at  Westminster  School  and 
at  Cambridge,  enjoyed  the  advantages 
of  foreign  travel,  and  on  his  return 
represented  the  tory  interest  in  parlia- 
ment as  a  borough  member.     He  mar- 
ried the  daughter  of  James  Porten,  a 
London  merchant,  and  of  this  union, 
the  first  child,  Edward,  the  subject  of 
this  notice,  was  born  at  the  family  es- 
tate at  Putney,  in  the  County  of  Surry, 
on  the  27th  of  April,  old  style,  1737. 
So  weak  appeared  the  constitution  of 
the  child,  that  his  father,  to  preserve 
the  family  designation,  thought  fit  to 
call  each  of  his  five  brothers  who  suc- 
ceeded him  by  the  name  of  Edward 
yet  they  all  died  in  their  infancy,  leav- 
ing the  first-born  to  maintain  the  hon 
ors  of  the  title.     The  care  of  Edward 
in  his  feeble  childhood  fell  to  his  aunt 
Mrs.  Catharine  Porten,  who  watched 
over  him  with  the  greatest  assiduity 
and  to  whose  kind  care  he  attributed 
the  preservation  of  his  life.     At  the 
age  of  seven  he  was  provided  with  a 
domestic  tutor  named  Kirkby,  a  man 
of  some  ingenuity  as  an  author  and 
grammarian,  from  whose  hands,  at  the 
end  of  eighteen  months,  he  was  sent  tc 
a  school  at  Kingston,  where,  as  he  trlla 


EDWAKD  GIBBON. 


.  us,  "  by  the  common  methods  of  disci- 
pline, at  the  expense  of  many  tears  and 
some  blood,  I  purchased  the  knowledge 
of  the  Latin  syntax."  The  authors 
which  he  studied  at  this  time,  or,  as 
he  expresses  it,  "painfully  construed 
and  darkly  understood,"  were  the  lives 
of  Cornelius  Nepos  and  the  fables  of 
Phsedrus.  The  one  gave  him  his  first 
glimpses  of  the  history  of  Greece  and 
Rome ;  the  other  taught  him  in  an  at- 
tractive form  "  the  truths  of  morality 
and  prudence."  After  two  years'  study 
at  the  school,  frequently  interrupted 
by  sickness,  he  was  recalled  by  his 
mother's  death,  which  brought  him 
again  within  the  attentions  of  his  aunt, 
a  lady  of  cultivated  understanding, 
who  encouraged  his  mental  develop- 
ment and  inspired  him  with  an  ar- 
dent pursuit  of  knowledge.  "  To  her 
kind  lessons,"  he  says,  "  I  ascribe  my 
early  and  invincible  love  of  reading, 
which  I  would  not  exchange  for  the 
treasures  of  India."  Owing  to  her  fa- 
ther's losses  in  business,  Mrs.  Porten, 
in  a  spirit  of  independence,  in  keeping 
with  her  high  character,  opened  a 
boarding-house  for  the  scholars  of 
Westminster  School.  Her  nephew, 
Edward,  now  at  the  age  of  twelve, 
joined  her  in  this  new  residence  and 
was  immediately  entered  at  the  school, 
which,  as  we  have  seen,  his  father  had 
attended  before  him.  The  boy  still 
needed  the  care  of  his  devoted  aunt ; 
his  studies  were  still  broken  in  upon 
by  his  maladies,  while  "  in  the  space  of 
two  years,  interrupted  by  danger  and 
debility,"  as  he  informs  us,  he  "  pain- 
fully climbed  into  the  third  form." 
All  this  while  his  lessons  were  of  the 
filamentary  character,  leaving  him  to 


"  acquire  in  a  riper  age  the  beauties  of 
the  Latin  and  the  rudiments  of  the 
Greek  tongue."  Unable  to  mingle  in 
the  sports  of  the  school,  his  leisure  with 
his  aunt  was  doubtless  largely  given 
to  reading.  He  was  already  familiar 
with  Pope's  Homer,  Dryden's  Virgil, 
Ovid's  Metamorphoses  and  the  Arabian 
Nights'  Entertainments,  and  had  "  turn 
ed  over  many  English  pages  of  poetry 
and  romance,  of  history  and  travels," 
in  his  maternal  grandfather's  library. 
A  severe  nervous  affection  now  led  to 
his  withdrawal  from  Westminster  to 
seek  relief  from  the  mineral  waters  at 
Bath,  and  some  time  was  passed  at  vari- 
ous residences,  his  education  being  car- 
ried on  in  the  most  desultory  manner, 
till  at  about  sixteen  his  constitution 
unexpectedly  developing  new  powers 
and  throwing  off  his  former  complaints, 
after  an  unprofitable  attempt  to  pursue 
his  studies  with  Francis,  the  translator 
of  Horace,  who  proved  too  careless  for 
the  duty  which  he  assumed,  the  young 
Gibbon,  without  further  preparation, 
before  he  had  accomplished  his  fifteenth 
year,  was  entered  by  his  father  as  a 
student  at  Magdalen  College,  Oxford. 

Imperfectly  trained  in  the  regular 
academic  studies  in  consequence  of  his 
frequent  attacks  of  illness,  the  youth 
carried  with  him  to  the  University  an 
extraordinary  stock  of  miscellaneous 
reading,  which  had  already  been  con- 
centrated upon  history,  especially  in 
reference  to  Greece  and  Rome.  He 
had  eagerly  perused  all  that  he  could 
lay  his  hands  upon  relating  to  these 
subjects  in  translations  of  the  ancient 
authors,  and  had  penetrated  beyond 
the  classic  period  into  the  later  Byzan- 
tine period  aid  the  outlying  history 


78 


EDWARD  GIBBON. 


of  the  East.  "  Before  I  was  sixteen," 
says  he, "  I  had  exhausted  all  that  could 
be  learned  in  English  of  the  Arabs  and 
Persians,  the  Tartars  and  Turks ;  and 
the  same  ardor  urged  me  to  guess  at 
the  French  of  D'Herbelot,  and  to  con- 
strue the  barbarous  Latin  of  Pocock's 
Albufaragius."  Nor  was  this  merely 
the  gratification  of  an  idle  curiosity. 
The  historic  passion  was  already  de- 
veloped within  him,  as  is  shown  by  his 
careful  study  of  geography  and  chro- 
nology. He  sought  order  and  accuracy 
in  the  confusion  of  the  early  dates,  and 
perplexed  himself  with  the  systems  of 
rival  authorities.  His  sleep  was  dis- 
turbed by  the  difficulty  of  reconciling 
the  Septuagint  with  the  Hebrew  com- 
putation. With  such  acquirements, 
"  I  arrived  at  Oxford,"  says  he,  "  with 
a  stock  of  erudition  that  might  have 
puzzled  a  doctor,  and  a  degree  of  ig- 
norance, of  which  a  school-boy  would 
have  been  ashamed." 

The  transition  to  the  University 
was  well  calculated  to  make  a  mark- 
ed impression  on  a  youth  whose  intel- 
lectual faculties  were  thus  alive  for 
wonder  and  admiration.  Entering, 
with  all  the  privileges  of  wealth,  "I 
felt  myself  suddenly  raised  from  a  boy 
to  a  man ;  the  persons,  whom  I  respect- 
ed as  my  superiors  in  age  and  acade- 
mical rank,  entertained  me  with  every 
mark  of  attention  and  civility;  and 
my  vanity  was  nattered  by  the  velvet 
cap  and  silk  gown  which  distinguished 
a  gentleman-commoner  from  a  plebeian 
student.  A  decent  allowance,  more 
money  than  a  school-boy  had  ever 
seen,  was  at  my  own  disposal;  and  I 
might  command,  among  the  tradesmen 
at  Oxford,  an  indefinite  and  dangerous 


latitude  of  credit.  A  key  was  deliv 
ered  into  my  hands,  which  gave  me 
the  free  use  of  a  numerous  and  learn- 
ed library:  my  apartment  consisted 
of  three  elegant  and  well  furnished 
rooms  in  the  new  building,  a  stately 
pile,  of  Magdalen  College;  and  the 
adjacent  walks,  had  they  been  fre- 
quented by  Plato's  disciples,  might 
have  been  compared  to  the  Attic  shade 
on  the  banks  of  the  Ilissus."  "With 
such  advantages  shielding  the  student 
so  effectually  in  his  defects  of  special 
preparation,  one  would  have  thought 
the  course  of  an  ingenuous  youth  would 
have  been  steadily  onward  without  in- 
terruption. Eveiy  opportunity  was  in 
his  way  to  amend  his  deficiencies,  with 
a  large  liberty  for  the  prosecution  of 
his  favorite  studies.  But  too  much 
appears  to  have  been  left  to  his  choice  • 
his  tutors  were  compliant  and  indiffer- 
ent, and  he  took  advantage  of  their 
neglect,  giving  himself  freely  to  the 
amusements  and  dissipations  of  the 
place.  He  needed  restraint  and  pre- 
scribed duties,  and  from  both  he  was 
exempt  in  the  privileged  ease  of  the 
college.  But  though  he  was  acquiring 
little  in  exact  learning  or  mental  disci 
pline,  his  mind  was  not  inactive.  In 
his  first  long  vacation  he  was  intent 
upon  writing  a  book  which  involved 
much  learned  reading,  on  "The  Age 
of  Sesostris,"  and  actually  accomplish- 
ed a  portion  of  it.  On  his  return  to 
the  University,  he  engaged  in  a  course 
of  religious  reading,  excited  by  the  pe- 
rusal of  Dr.  Middleton's  "  Free  Inquiry 
into  the  Miraculous  Powers  possessed 
by  the  Church  in  the  Early  Ages,"  a 
work  so  consonant  with  Gibbon's  later 
habits  of  thought,  that  it  is  surprising 


EDWAKD   GIBBON. 


that  he  did  not  then  accept  its  skepti- 
cism in  relation  to  the  pretensions  up- 
on which  the  Romanists  relied.  But 
ais  prejudices  were  then  enlisted  on 
the  side  of  what  he  considered  author- 
ity, and  with  the  wholesale  ardor  of 
youth,  accepting  as  an  inference  from 
the  miraculous  claims  of  the  Church 
of  Rome,  its  whole  series  of  doctrines, 
having  finished  his  conversion  by  him- 
self chiefly  from  the  writings  of  Bos- 
suet,  he  got  access  to  a  Jesuit  priest 
in  London,  and  "  at  his  feet  solemnly, 
though  privately,  abjured  the  errors 
of  heresy."  As  the  act  of  a  youth  of 
sixteen,  in  the  situation  of  life  in  which 
Gibbon  was  placed,  it  exhibits  a  cer- 
tain courageous  enthusiasm  of  charac- 
ter, not  less  than  the  vanity  or  indis- 
cretion to  which  it  might  be  readily 
assigned.  Looking  back  upon  it  in  af- 
ter life,  he  writes,  "To  my  present 
feelings,  it  seems  incredible  that  I 
should  ever  believe  that  I  believed  in 
transubstantiation." 

This  boyish  freak  cost  the  convert  his 
luxurious  abode  in  Magdalen  and  trans- 
ferred him  according  to  an  arrangement 
made  by  his  father  to  the  care  of  Mr. 
Pavilliard,  a  Calvinist  minister  at 
Lausanne,  in  Switzerland,  who  was 
now  charged  with  the  continuance  of 
his  studies  with  the  view  of  disengag- 
ing his  mind  from  his  new  ecclesiasti- 
cal opinions.  A  better  choice  of  a 
preceptor  could  hardly  have  been  made 
than  this  calm,  clear-headed,  mode- 
rate, benevolent  M.  Pavilliard,  a  man 
of  learning  and  information,  who 
speedily  acquired  an  influence  over 
his  pupil,  and  in  no  long  time,  "  the 
various  articles  of  the  Romish  creed 
disappearing  like  a  dream,"  brought 


him  into  full  communion  with  the 
Protestant  Church  of  Lausanne.  "It 
was  here,"  writes  the  mature  Gibbon, 
"that  I  suspended  my  religious  in- 
quiries, acquiescing  with  implicit  be- 
lief in  the  tenets  and  mysteries,  which 
.are  adopted  by  the  general  consent  of 
Catholics  and  Protestants." 

But  it  was  not  only  in  his  amended 
religious  creed  that  Gibbon  profited 
by  the  instructions  of  his  new  teacher. 
The  whole  current  of  his  life  was 
changed  by  this  transfer  to  Switzer- 
land. In  place  of  the  luxurious  quar- 
ters of  the  fellow  commoner  at  Magda- 
len, he  was  now,  with  a  tightened 
purse,  submitting  to  the  small  econo- 
mies of  a  meagre  residence  in  a  dull 
street  of  an  unhandsome  town,  with 
his  studies  to  begin  anew  in  the  ele- 
ments of  a  foreign  language.  It  was 
much  to  his  credit  that  he  accepted 
the  new  conditions  with  equanimity. 
Here,  indeed,  at  Lausanne,  his  educa- 
tion as  a  source  of  power  and  strength 
may  fairly  be  said  to  have  begun.  He 
not  only  became  thoroughly  acquaint- 
ed with  French  and  accustomed  to 
write  and  speak  it,  but  he  thought 
in  it  and  incorporated  its  finer  spirit 
with  his  mental  processes.  His  Eng- 
lish prejudices  disappeared  under  this 
foreign  culture,  and  the  sphere  of  his 
criticism  on  history  and  its  methods 
were  greatly  enlarged.  He  made 
himself  also  a  master  of  the  Latin  and 
acquired  a  knowledge  of  the  Greek, 
which  he  afterwards  perfected.  Choos- 
ing some  classic  Latin  or  French  au 
thor,  he  would  translate  from  one 
tongue  into  the  other,  and  when  the 
phrases  had  passed  from  his  memory, 
would  re-translate  his  work  into  the 


EDWAED   GIBBON. 


other  language  and  compare  the  result 
with  the  original  from  which  he  had 
started.  In  this  way  he  became  ac- 
complished in  two  foreign  tongues. 
An  intimate  knowledge  of  Cicero  led 
the  way  to  his  acquaintance  with  the 
whole  series  of  the  Latin  classics,  of 
which  he  made  abstracts  in  French. 
A  close  study  of  logic  gave  dexterity 
to  his  critical  faculties,  which  were  set 
in  motion  and  sharpened  by  the  delight 
with  which  he  perused  the  Provincial 
Letters  of  Pascal,  from  which  he  learn- 
ed the  art  of  which  he  so  often  availed 
himself  in  his  "  History,"  of  "  manag- 
ing the  weapon  of  grave  and  temperate 
irony,  even  on  subjects  of  ecclesiasti- 
ca  solemnity."  The  confidence  and  ac- 
tivity of  his  mind  were  shown  in  his 
opening  a  correspondence  on  points  of 
learned  inquiry  with  various  distin- 
guished professors  of  Europe,  in  which 
he  sustained  his  part  with  credit.  Al- 
together, the  five  years  of  his  novitiate 
at  Lausanne,  were  well  spent,  and 
when,  at  the  end  of  this  time,  he  was 
recalled  by  his  father  to  England,  the 
foundation  of  his  future  literary  great- 
ness may  be  said  to  have  been  already 
laid.  An  episode  of  his  career  as  a 
student  at  Lausanne  should  not-  be 
forgotten.  While  there  he  fell  in  love 
with  a  learned  and  accomplished  young 
lady,  Mademoiselle  Curchod,  the  daugh- 
ter of  a  Swiss  rural  pastor,  and  would, 
if  his  father  had  not  forbidden  the  un- 
ion, have  made  her  his  wife.  "  I  sigh- 
ed," says  he,  with  a  philosophical  equi- 
librium which  had  now  become  his 
characteristic,  "as  a  lover,  I  obeyed 
as  a  son;  my  wound  was  insensibly 
healed  by  time,  absence  and  the  hab- 
'ts  of  a  new  life."  The  lady  was  after- 


wards married  to  a  native  of  Geneva, 
a  rich  banker  of  Paris,  M.  Necker, 
who  as  the  minister  of  finance  of  the 
dying  French  monarchy,  acquired  an 
historic  fame.  Nor  are  the  pair  less 
known  as  the  parents  of  that  remarka- 
ble phenomenon  in  female  intellect, 
the  celebrated  Madame  De  Stael. 

On  his  return  to  England  Gibbon 
was  greeted  with  all  the  warmth  of 
her  former  affection  by  the  kind  aunt 
to  whom  he  owed  so  much ;  wrhile  his 
father,  who  had  parted  with  him  with 
an  air  of  severity,  was  conciliated 
by  the  evident  good  effects  of  the 
pupilage  to  which  he  had  consigned 
him  at  Lausanne.  In  his  mother-in- 
law,  whom  he  had  not  before  seen,  he 
found  a  lady  of  understanding  and 
esprit  who  appreciated  his  various  ac- 
complishments. Under  these  auspices 
he  was  free  to  pursue  with  every  ad- 
vantage of  fortune,  his  own  tastes  and 
inclinations.  The  first  employment 
which  was  thought  of  for  him  was  that 
of  secretary  to  a  foreign  embassy,  if  such 
a  place  could  be  found;  and  it  was 
partly  to  advance  his  pretensions  to  an 
appointment  of  the  kind  that  he  set 
about  the  completion  of  his  first  pub- 
lication, an  "Essay  on  the  Study  of 
Literature,"  written  in  the  French 
language,  in  which  it  was  now  easier 
for  him  to  compose  than  in  his  own 
tongue.  After  a  deal  of  preparation 
and  revision  it  was  issued  in  London 
in  1761,  when  its  author  was  at  the 
age  of  twenty-four.  In  the  autobio 
graphy  will  be  found  a  retrospective 
criticism  of  the  work,  the  candor  of 
which,  in  its  administration  of  praise 
and  censure,  is  not  without  a  certain 
kind  of  humor.  While  condemning  its 


EDWARD   GIBBOK 


81 


confusion  and  occasional  obscurity  he 
looks  back  upon  it  with  pride  as  the 
creditable  production  of  a  young 
writer  of  two-and-twenty,  "who  had 
read  with  taste,  who  thinks  with  free- 
dom, and  who  writes  in  a  foreign  lan- 
guage with  spirit  and  elegance."  The 
"  Essay"  also  appeared  in  English,  but 
the  author  speaks  slightingly  of  the 
translation.  The  work,  as  might  have 
been  expected,  was  better  received  on 
the  continent  than  in  England.  It  at- 
tracted the  attention  of  the  savans  of 
France,  Holland  and  Switzerland,  and 
paved  the  way  for  the  writer's  early 
admission  into  their  ranks. 

While  this  work  was  in  progress, 
Gibbon  had  been  pursuing  his  studies 
with  a  diligence  and  zeal  which  had 
already  become  habitual  to  him  and 
which  not  even  the  dissipations  of 
a  London  season  could  effectually  im- 
pair. On  the  receipt  of  the  first  quar- 
terly payment  of  a  liberal  allowance 
from  his  father,  a  large  share  of  it  was 
appropriated  to  his  literary  wants.  "  I 
cannot  forget,"  says  he,  "the  joy  with 
which  I  exchanged  a  bank-note  of 
twenty  pounds  for  the  twenty  volumes 
of  the  Memoirs  of  the  Academy  of  In- 
scriptions; nor  would  it  have  been 
easy,  by  any  other  expenditure  of  the 
same  sum,  to  have  procured  so  large 
and  lasting  a  fund  of  rational  amuse- 
ment." The  choice  indicates  the  scholar 
and  the  future  historian.  His  reading 
of  the  classic  authors  and  their  com- 
mentators was  continued,  and  by  a 
judicious  method  he  fully  incorporated 
what  he  read  with  his  own  reflections. 
"After  glancing  my  eye,"  he  tells  us, 
1  over  the  design  and  order  of  a  new 
book,  I  suspended  the  perusal  till  I 
11 


had  finished  the  task  of  self-examina- 
tion, till  I  had  revolved,  in  a  solitary 
walk,  all  that  I  knew  or  believed,  or 
had  thought  on  the  subject  of  the 
whole  work,  or  of  some  particular 
chapter:  I  was  then  qualified  to  dis- 
cern how  much  the  author  added  to 
my  original  stock  •  and  if  I  was  some- 
times satisfied  by  the  agreement,  I  was 
sometimes  armed  by  the  opposition  of 
our  ideas." 

His  studies  were  however  broken  in 
upon  by  what  to  a  person  of  his  tastes 
was  a  novel  sort  of  life.  It  was  the 
period  of  the  Seven  Years'  War,  in 
which  England  participated,  and  the 
old  chronic  alarm  of  an  invasion  of 
the  country  had  stirred  up  the  enlist- 
ment of  a  local  militia.  The  patriot- 
ism of  the  Gibbons  was  aroused  in 
their  residence  in  Hampshire,  and  in 
the  battalion  which  was  raised  in  the 
county  the  father  was  commissioned 
as  major,  and  the  son  as  captain.  The 
work  once  undertaken,  there  was  no 
easy  or  honorable  mode  of  abandoning 
it,  so  that  our  embryo  historian  for 
two  years  and  a-half  was  actively  en 
gaged  in  furthering  and  superintend- 
ing the  various  encampments  of  his 
restless  regiment  through  the  southern 
counties  from  Winchester  to  South- 
ampton. During  these  movements,  in 
which  his  time  was  much  engrossed 
by  the  bustling  importance  of  the 
camp,  there  was,  of  course,  little  time 
for  systematic  reading,  though  that 
was  not  wholly  resigned,  while,  as  he 
fondly  narrates,  "  on  every  march,  in 
every  journey,  Horace  was  always  in 
my  pocket  and  often  in  my  hand." 
Meanwhile,  as  his  diary  shows,  he  was 
planning  future  historical  undertak- 


82 


EDWAED   GIBBON. 


ings,  meditating  first  the  expedition  of 
Charles  VIII.  of  France  into  Italy; 
then  topics  of  English  history,  as  the 
crusade  of  Bichard  I.,  the  Barons'  wars 
against  John  and  Henry  III.,  the  His- 
tory of  Edward  the  Black  Prince,  and 
settling  down  for  a  time,  after  a  glance 
at  Sir  Philip  Sidney,  upon  a  kindred 
subject  of  mixed  biography  and  his- 
tory, the  life  of  Sir  Walter  Kaleigh. 
After  extensive  reading  regarding  this 
hero,  finding,  among  other  difficulties, 
"  his  fame  confined  to  the  narrow  lim- 
its of  our  language  and  our  island," 
he  looked  abroad  for  a  wider  subject 
in  the  History  of  the  Liberty  of  the 
Swiss  and  the  Republic  of  Florence 
under  the  Medici.  All  these  show  his 
passion  for  history,  to  which  he  was 
turning  even  his  military  occupation 
to  account.  "The  discipline  and  evo- 
lutions of  a  modern  battalion,"  he 
writes,  "  gave  me  a  clearer  notion  of 
the  phalanx  and  the  legion ;  and  the 
captain  of  the  Hampshire  grenadiers 
(the  reader  may  smile)  has  not  been 
useless  to  the  historian  of  the  Roman 
Empire." 

When  the  war  was  ended  by  the 
treaty  of  Paris,  in  1763,  the  militia 
was  disbanded  and  Gibbon  was  once 
more  free  to  pursue  his  own  inclina- 
tions. A  month  had  hardly  passed 
when  he  was  again  on  the  continent 
engaged  in  the  round  of  foreign  travel 
which  was  thought  essential  to  com- 
plete the  education  of  an  English  gen- 
tleman. Three  or  four  months  were 
passed  in  Paris  in  the  study  of  its 
antiquities  and  literary  resources,  and 
"in  friendly  communication  with  its 
men  of  letters,  when  the  journey  was 
piirsued  to  Switzerland  and  his  now 


beloved  Lausanne,  where  he  was  wel- 
comed with  enthusiasm  by  his  tutor 
Pavilliard,  and  lingered  eleven  months 
before  he  advanced  into  Italy.  His 
classical  studies  had  prepared  him  for 
the  full  appreciation  of  the  latter 
country.  He  followed  up  its  antiqui- 
ties with  his  usual  energy,  was  im- 
pressed by  all  its  wonders  with  some- 
thing of  a  poetical  imagination,  and 
when  he  reached  Rome,  the  literary 
dreams  of  his  life  were  ready  to  be 
concentrated  upon  one  enduring  vision, 
the  realization  of  which  in  a  perma- 
nent work  was  to  give  employment  to 
the  best  years  of  his  life.  "  It  was  at 
Rome,"  says  he,  "on  the  15th  of  Oc- 
tober, 1764,  as  I  sat  musing  amidst  the 
ruins  of  the  Capitol,  while  the  bare- 
footed friars  were  singing  vespers  in 
the  temple  of  Jupiter,  that  the  idea  of 
writing  the  decline  and  fall  of  the  city 
first  started  to  my  mind.  But  my 
original  plan  was  circumscribed  to  the 
decay  of  the  city  rather  than  of  the 
empire;  and  though  my  reading  and 
reflections  began  to  point  towards  that 
object,  some  years  elapsed  and  several 
avocations  intervened,  before  I  was 
seriously  engaged  in  the  execution  of 
that  laborious  work." 

Returning  to  England  in  the  sum- 
mer of  1765,  he  resumed  for  a  time  his 
engagements  in  the  militia  service  with 
the  rank  of  major  and  lieutenant  colo- 
nel commandant ;  and  being  joined  by 
his  friend  M.  Deyverdun,  an  accom- 
plished gentleman  with  whom  he  had 
become  intimate  in  Switzerland,  he  en- 
gaged with  him  in  1767,  in  the  publi- 
cation of  a  species  of  review  or  critical 
journal  entitled,  "Memoires  Litteraires 
de  la  Grand  Bretagne,"  which  reached 


EDWARD   GIBBON. 


a  second  volume  the  following  year. 
To  this  miscellany  Gibbon  contributed 
among  other  papers  a  trenchant  review 
of  Lord  Littelton's  History  of  Henry 
II.  The  work,  composed  in  French^ 
was  not  likely  to  meet  with  a  large 
circulation;  but  it  gained  reputation 
for  the  writers  and  introduced  them  to 
the  acquaintance  of  "David  Hume,  who 
was  much  admired  as  an  historian  by 
Gibbon,  and  who  lived  to  enjoy  with 
great  unction  the  perusal  of  the  first 
volume  of  his  friend's  Roman  history. 
In  his  next  publication,  issued  anony- 
mously in  1770,  Gibbon  entered  the 
field  in  opposition  to  Warburton,  in  an 
,  attack  upon  that  prelate's  hypothesis, 
in  his  "  Divine  Legation  of  Moses,"  of  a 
revelation  of  the  Eleusinian  Mysteries 
by  Virgil,  in  the  sixth  book  of  the 
JEneid.  This  Essay  was  our  author's 
first  publication  in  English.  After  this 
his  studies  were  steadily  directed  to 
the  work  of  preparation  for  his  great 
work  on  the  history  of  Rome.  By  the 
death  of  his  father  he  came  into  pos- 
session of  a  moderate  fortune,  and  was 
free  to  pursue  his  own  plans  in  life. 
His  time  was  divided  between  city  and 
country.  At  the  residence  of  his  inti- 
mate friend  and  constant  correspond- 
ent Mr.  Holroyd,  afterwards  Lord 
Sheffield,  in  Sussex,  he  found  a  home 
where  he  was  always  appreciated.  In 
town  he  mingled  freely  in  the  fashion- 
able society  of  the  metropolis,  and  in  the 
literary  clubs  formed  the  acquaintance 
of  the  eminent  wits  of  the  time,  John- 
son, Burke,  Garrick,  Goldsmith  and 
the  rest.  Gathering  his  books  about 
him  in  his  house  in  London,  he  set 
seriously  to  work  at  the  composition 
of  the  "  Decline  and  Fall  of  the  Roman 


Empire."  Much  of  the  learning  re- 
quisite for  his  purpose  he  had  already 
accumulated ;  but  a  style  was  yet  to 
be  formed.  "Many  experiments,"  he 
tells  us,  "were  made  before  I  could 
hit  the  middle  tone  between  a  dull 
chronicle  and  a  rhetorical  declamation : 
three  times  did  I  compose  the  first 
chapter,  and  twice  the  second  and  third, 
before  I  was  tolerably  satisfied  with 
their  effect."  "Style,"  Buffon  says, 
"is  the  man,"  and  that  of  Gibbon 
truly  represents  his  character — a  com- 
posite union  of  his  French  and  Eng- 
lish education,  self-conscious,  animat- 
ed and  important.  Language  grew 
in  his  hands  to  be  the  most  apt 
and  forcible  means  for  the  adequate 
presentation  of  his  subject,  cover, 
ing  the  events  of  many  centuries 
in  the  records  of  divers  nations  in 
every  degree  of  culture  from  the  most 
refined  civilization  to  the  rudest  bar- 
barism, and  producing  a  living  picture 
of  the  whole,  which  moves  and  breathes 
in  every  page.  There  is  indeed  a  cer- 
tain mannerism  in  the  language ;  but 
this  is  common  to  the  style  of  great 
authors  'and  marks  its  individuality. 
It  is  certainly  not  a  model  for  imita- 
tion on  ordinary  subjects ;  but  in  the 
privileged  hands  of  Gibbon  it  is  an 
instrument  of  great  power,  capable  of 
conveying  the  finest  meanings,  distin- 
guished by  its  philosophical  acumen, 
which  has  frequently  the  force  of  wit, 
and,  above  all,  to  be  admired  for  its 
march  to  "  the  Dorian  sound  of  flutes 
and,  soft  recorders,"  in  the  imposing 
progress  of  a  grand  historic  narrative. 
Its  condensation  is  wonderful.  The 
most  interesting  details  feed  the  curi 
osity  of  the  reader  while  they  are 


EDWAKD   GIBBON. 


never  suffered  to  fatigue  his  attention. 
The  work  in  its  thousands  of  pages 
glitters  with  perpetual  novelty.  Fact 
and  philosophy  are  blended  in  happy 
union.  It  is  one  musical  incantation 
from  beginning  to  end.  The  industry 
of  the  author  never  flags ;  his  literary 
genius  is  never  at  fault. 

In  our  author's  previous  studies  we 
have  seen  something  of  his  half  con- 
scious preparation  for  this  work.  As 
he  approached  his  task  more  closely 
he  applied  himself  with  greater  devo- 
tion to  its  special  requirements.  Geo- 
graphy, chronology,  the  study  of  medals 
and  antiquities  no  less  than  the  ordi- 
nary historic  authorities  were  his  con- 
stant care.  His  reading  was  iudefati- 
gible  ;  so  that  when  he  began  to  write, 
his  mind  being  fully  charged  with  the 
subject,  the  most  costly  materials  were 
on  every  side  at  hand  for  the  construc- 
tion of  his  edifice.  Two  things  are 
particularly  noticeable  in  his  language : 
one,  the  constant  presentation  of  the 
object  in  the  foreground  of  his  sen- 
tences ;  the  other,  the  choice  of  motives 
which  he  steadily  presents  to  the 
reader  in  his  balancing  of  opinions. 

While  engaged  in  the  composition 
of  the  early  portions  of  the  history, 
Gibbon  by  family  influence  was  re- 
turned to  parliament  for  a  borough. 
He  sat  in  the  House  of  Commons  for 
several  years,  supporting  steadily  by 
his  vote  through  the  progress  of  .the 
American  question,  the  tory  adminis- 
tration of  Lord  North,  for  whose  per- 
sonal qualities  he  had  the  highest 
admiration.  As  usual,  he  was  turning 
his  experience  to  account  for  the  great 
work  of  his  life.  "  The  eight  sessions," 
Bays  he,  "  that  I  sat  in  parliament  were 


a  school  of  civil  prudence,  the  first  and 
most  essential  virtue  of  an  historian." 
A  more  immediately  practical  result 
was  his  appointment  at  the  instance  01 
Lord  Loughborough  as  one  of  the  Lords 
of  Trade,  which  brought  an  addition 
to  his  income  of  between  seven  and 
eight  hundred  pounds  per  annum. 
This  was  continued  for  three  years, 
when  it  was  brought  to  an  end  by  the 
fall  of  Lord  North's  administration, 
which  closed  Gibbon's  parliamentary 
career.  The  reception  of  his  history 
was,  however,  now  making  him  amends 
for  his  losses.  The  first  volume,  pub- 
lished  in  1776,  was  succeeded  by  the 
second  and  third  in  1781,  bringing  the 
work  to  the  fall  of  the  Western  Em- 
pire. Its  success  was  immediate.  "  I 
am  at  a  loss  to  describe  it,"  writes 
Gibbon, "  without  betraying  the  vanity 
of  the  writer.  The  first  impression  (of 
the  first  volume)  was  exhausted  in  a 
few  days ;  a  second  and  third  edition 
were  scarcely  adequate  to  the  demand ; 
and  the  bookseller's  property  was 
twice  invaded  by  the  pirates  of  Dub- 
lin. My  book  was  on  every  table,  and 
almost  on  every  toilette  ;  the  historian 
was  crowned  by  the  taste  or  fashion 
of  the  day ;  nor  was  the  general  voice 
disturbed  by  the  barking  of  any  pro- 
fane critic."  The  word  "  profane  "  is 
marked  by  the  author's  italics  and  re- 
fers to  the  storm  of  censure  with  which 
the  chapters  on  the  Early  Progress  of 
Christianity  were  greeted  by  the  critics 
of  a  more  sacred  order,  at  the  head  of 
whom  may  be  ranked  Bishop  Watson, 
whose  reply  was  entitled  "  An  Apology 
for  Christianity."  While  allowing 
Gibbon  every  latitude  for  his  criticism 
of  the  historical  conditions  of  his  theme 


EDWARD  GIBBON. 


exceptions  may  certainly  be  taken  to 
the  contemptuous  spirit  with  which  he 
often  approached  the  subject ;  his  lack 
of  sympathy  with  its  higher  elements, 
and  his  departure  in  this  instance  from 
the  usual  course  of  his  philosophical 
fairness.  Nor  less  is  to  be  censured  a 
certain  pruriency  in  his  treatment  of 
the  relations  of  the  sexes,  which  occa- 
sionally mars  his  work.  Setting  aside 
these  defects,  his  general  accuracy  has 
been  admitted  by  the  most  learned  in- 
vestigators of  his  theme,  and  in  the 
library  of  every  scholar  his  work  will 
be  found  by  the  side  of  the  great 
classic  historians  of  the  world. 

Gibbon  remained  in  England  till 
1783,  when  he  removed  to  Lausanne, 
his  old  retreat,  with  the  intention  of 
making  the  place  his  permanent  re- 
sidence. The  motives  which  led  to 
this  change  were  varied.  Much  was 
to  be  gained  on  the  score  of  leisure 
and  independence ;  he  would  be  free 
from  the  political  and  other  distrac- 
tions of  London,  and  at  liberty  to  de- 
vote his  best  powers  to  the  completion 
of  his  literary  task  ;  while,  on  the  score 
of  economy,  the  income,  which  was 
hardly  sufficient  for  the  claims  of  so- 
ciety in  England,  more  than  met  every 
liberal  requisition  in  Switzerland.  The 
companionship  of  his  friend  Mr.  Dey- 
^erdun,  who  had  invited  him  to  share 
his  habitation  in  Lausanne,  offered  to 
him  the  comforts  and  resources  of  a 
home.  Gibbon  undertook  to  support 
the  expenses  of  the  house,  which  was 
situated  in  one  of  the  finest  parts  of 
the  town,  overlooking  the  Lake  of 
Geneva  and  the  mountains  beyond. 
Here  he  brought  his  books  and  added 
to  their  number ;  a  picked  collection  f 


of  some  six  or  seven  thousand  volumes, 
It  was  a  full  twelvemonth,  however, 
as  he  informs  us,  before  he  "  could  re- 
sume the  thread  of  regular  and  daily 
industry."  Then,  with  all  his  re- 
sources  at  command,  his  work  proceed- 
ed apace.  The  morning  hours  were 
regularly  given  to  it,  and  he  seldom 
allowed  it  to  exceed  the  day,  only  at 
the  last,  when  he  was  anxious  for  its 
completion,  permitting  it  to  trespass 
upon  the  evening.  At  the  end  of 
three  years,  the  great  labor  was  accom- 
plished. "  I  have  presumed,"  says  he 
in  his  Memoir,  in  allusion  to  a  passage 
already  cited,  "  to  mark  the  moment 
of  conception:  I  shall  now  commem- 
orate the  hour  of  my  final  deliver- 
ance. It  was  on  the  day,  or  rather 
night,  of  the  27th  of  June,  1787,  be 
tween  the  hours  of  eleven  and  twelve, 
that  I  wrote  the  last  lines  of  the  ]ast 
page  in  a  summer-house  in  my  garden. 
After  laying  down  my  pen,  I  took 
several  turns  in  a  lerceau  or  covered 
walk  of  acacias,  which  commands  a 
prospect  of  the  country,  the  lake  and 
the  mountains.  The  air  was  tempe- 
rate, the  sky  was  serene,  the  silver  orb 
of  the  moon  was  reflected  from  the 
waters,  and  all  nature  was  silent.  I 
will  not  dissemble  the  first  emotions 
of  joy  on  recovery  of  my  freedom,  and 
perhaps,  the  establishment  of  my  fame. 
But  my  pride  was  soon  humbled,  and, 
a  sober  melancholy  was  spread  over 
my  mind,  by  the  idea  that  I  had  taken 
an  everlasting  leave  of  an  old  and 
agreeable  companion,  and  that  whatso- 
ever might  be  the  future  date  of  my 
History,  the  life  of  the  historian  must 
be  short  and  precarious." 

Thus  was  brought  to  a  close  this 


86 


EDWAKD   GIBBON. 


noble  work,  embracing  a  period  of 
thirteen  centuries,  and  connecting  the 
great  eras  of  ancient  and  modern  civili- 
zation. It  begins  with  a  review  of  the 
prosperity  of  the  Eoman  Empire  in 
the  acre  of  the  Antonines,  and  ends 

O  ' 

with  a  picture  of  the  renewed  glories 
of  the  imperial  city  in  its  present  as- 
pect, when  its  "  footsteps  of  heroes,  the 
relics,  not  of  superstition,  but  of 
empire,  are  devoutly  visited  by  a 
new  race  of  pilgrims  from  the  remote 
and  once  savage  countries  of  the  north. 
Of  these  pilgrims,"  he  says  in  conclu- 
sion in  a  retrospective  glance  at  the 
entire  work,  "  the  attention  will  be 
excited  by  a  history  of  the  decline  and 
fall  of  the  Eoman  Empire ;  the  great- 
est, perhaps,  and  most  awful  scene,  iu 
the  history  of  mankind.  The  various 
causes  and  progressive  effects  are  con- 
nected with  many  of  the  events  most 
interesting  in  human  annals :  the  art- 
ful policy  of  the  Caesars,  who  long 
maintained  the  name  and  image  of  a 
free  republic ;  the  disorders  of  military 
despotism  ;  the  rise,  establishment  and 
sects  of  Christianity;  the  foundation 
of  Constantinople;  the  division  of  the 
monarchy  ;  the  invasion  and  settle- 
ments of  the  barbarians  of  Germany 
and  Scythia ;  the  institutions  of  the 
civil  law ;  the  character  and  religion 
of  Mahomet ;  the  temporal  sovereignty 
of  the  Popes ;  the  restoration  and  de- 
cay of  the  AVestern  Empire  of  Charle- 
magne ;  the  crusades  of  the  Latins  in 


the  East ;  the  conquest  of  the  Saracens 
and  Turks ;  the  ruin  of  the  Greek 
Empire ;  the  state  and  revolutions  of 
Eome  in  the  middle  age." 

Having  finished  his  work,  Gibbon 
proceeded  to  England  to  superintend 
its  issue  from  the  press.  The  new  por- 
tion, equal  in  extent  to  the  old,  formed 
three  quarto  volumes.  It  was  given 
to  the  public  on  the  fifty-first  anniver- 
sary of  the  author's  birthday,  the  fes- 
tival being  celebrated  by  a  literary 
dinner  at  the  publisher's,  Mr.  Cadell's, 
at  which  a  poem  by  Hayley  was  read, 
in  which  the  historian  was  vaguely 
complimented  by  association  with 
Newton  and  Shakespeare.  A  better 
tribute  to  his  fame  is  the  silent  and 
enduring  admiration  of  successive 
generations  of  readers  and  the  zeal  of 
able  translators  and  editors  like  Guizot 
and  Milman,  in  assisting  their  compre- 
hension of  his  work. 

Eeturning  to  Lausanne,  Gibbon  re- 
mained there  till  1793,  when  he  again 
visited  his  friend  Lord  Sheffield  in 
England.  He  was  now  afflicted  with 
a  troublesome  dropsical  affection, 
which  he  had  long  neglected,  and 
which  he  was  at  length  compelled  to 
submit  to  medical  treatment.  The 
surgeons  gave  him  some  relief,  but 
were  unable  to  cure  the  malady,  under 
the  effects  of  which  he  sunk  rapidly  at 
last,  closing  his  days  at  his  temporary 
lodgings  in  London  on  the  16th  of 
January,  1794. 


MARIE    ANTOINETTE* 


MAKIE  ANTOINETTE  was  born 
at  Vienna,  November  2d,  1753, 
the  daughter  of  Francis  of  Lorraine, 
Emperor  of  Germany,  and  of  Maria 
Theresa,  Archduchess  of  Austria, 
Queen  of  Hungary  and  Bohemia,  and 
Empress  of  Germany.  Persons  whose 
curiosity  or  credulity  may  incline  them 
to  regard  what,  after  the  event,  are 
brought  up  as  ominous  coincidences, 
may  be  struck  with  the  circumstance 
noticed  by  her  biographers,  that  the 
birth  of  the  ill-fated  Queen  of  France 
occurred  on  the  same  day  with  that 
which  is  darkly  marked  in  the  calen- 
dar as  that  of  the  destruction  of  Lis- 
bon by  the  earthquake,  an  event  which 
long  excited  a  fearful  interest  in  the 
European  community.  It  was  indeed 
a  troubled  world  into  which  Marie 
Antoinette  was  born.  After  unprece- 
dented queenly  efforts  which  have 
gained  her  a  distinguished  name  among 
the  royal  heroines  of  the  world,  Maria 
Theresa,  having  vigorously  defended 
her  Austrian  dominions  and  maintain- 
ed a  resolute  struggle  with  Frederic 
the  Great,  had  seen  her  husband  raised 
to  the  rank  of  Emperor,  and  the  long 
European  contest  in  wiich  she  had 
been  engaged  terminated  by  the  treaty 


of  Aix  La  Chapelle  recognizing  her 
succession  and  leaving  her  with  the  ex- 
ception of  Silesia  in  enjoyment  of  her 
coveted  territories.  After  a  brief  in- 
terval, the  Seven  Years'  War,  in  which 
Austria  was  associated  with  France 
and  Russia  against  Prussia,  had  fol- 
lowed, closing  in  1763,  and  two  years 
later,  by  the  death  of  her  husband 
Francis  I.,  her  son  Joseph  succeeding 
him  as  Emperor,  she  was  left  during 
the  life-time  of  the  latter  free  to  repair 
the  injuries  of  war  by  devoting  herself 
to  the  peaceful  welfare  of  her  legiti- 
mate subjects,  a  task,  with  the  bold 
work  of  reform  which  it  required, 
hardly  less  hazardous  as  to  its  results 
than  the  contests  of  the  battle-field. 
If  Austria  had  gained  nothing  by  the 
wars  just  concluded,  France  had  lost 
much  in  the  cession  to  England  of 
Canada  and  her  other  North  American 
colonies.  To  regain  the  lost  prestige 
of  France  her  minister  for  foreign  af- 
fairs, the  Duke  de  Choiseul,  clung  all 
the  closer  to  his  favorite  policy,  the 
alliance  with  Austria,  and  to  advance 
the  interests  of  the  nation  in  this  direc- 
tion, early  projected  a  marriage  be- 
tween Louis,  the  grandson  of  Louis 
XV.,  and  heir  to  the  French  throne. 


88 


MAfliE   ANTOINETTE. 


and  Marie  Antoinette,  the  daughter  of 
Maria  Theresa.  When  this  affair  was 
brought  about  by  negotiation,  Louis 
was  a  youth  of  fifteen,  and  his  intend- 
ed bride  a  year  younger,  and  the  mar- 
riage had  been  contemplated  for  some 
time  before,  as  we  learn  from  a  letter 
written  by  the  Empress  Queen  to  her 
young  son-in-law  just  before  the  nup- 
tials, in  which  she  says,  "  I  have 
brought  her  up  with  this  design ;  for 
I  have  long  foreseen  that  she  would 
share  your  destiny." 

What  that  education  had  been  we 
may  gather  from  the  revelations  in  the 
Memoirs  of  the  Queen  by  her  intimate 
friend  Madame  Carnpan.  According 
to  her  account  it  had  been  much  neg- 
lected. She  tells  of  the  pretences  put 
forth  in  the  Austrian  court  of  the 
princesses  answering  addresses  in 
Latin,  when  in  reality  they  did  not 
understand  a  single  word  of  the  lan- 
guage, and  of  a  drawing  being  shown 
as  the  work  of  Marie  Antoinette  to 
the  French  Ambassador  sent  to  draw 
up  the  articles  for  her  marriage  con- 
tract, when  she  had  not  put  a  pencil 
to  it.  She  had  acquired  in  her  youth, 
however  —  no  mean  attainment  —  a 
good  knowledge  of  Italian,  having 
been  taught  by  no  less  a  person  than 
the  Abbe  Metastasio,  many  of  whose 
great  works  were  produced  during  his 
prolonged  residence  at  Vienna.  Of 
music,  that  necessaiy  accomplishment 
of  a  court,  she  appears  before  her 
arrival  in  France  to  have  learnt  little. 
French,  she  spoke  fluently  without 
writing  it  correctly,  though  some  ex- 
traordinary means  had  been  taken  to 
secure  this  branch  of  her  education. 
Her  mother,  the  Empress  Queen,  had 


provided  for  her  two  French  actors  as 
teachers,  one  for  pronunciation,  the 
other  for  taste  in  singing ;  but  as  ob- 
jection was  made  in  France  to  the  lat 
ter  on  account  of  his  bad  character,  an 
ecclesiastic,  the  Abbe  de  Vermond, 
was  chosen,  whose  influence  over  his 
pupil  is  described  as  unfavorable  in 
subsequently  leading  her  to  treat  with 
contempt  the  requirements  of  the 
French  court. 

The  preliminary  arrangements  of 
betrothal,  involving  a  great  deal  of 
state  ceremony  having  been  duly  gone 
through  with,  the  time  came  to  con- 
duct the  archduchess  to  Paris  to  accom- 
plish the  marriage.  The  journey  took 
place  early  in  May,  1770.  Leaving  Vi- 
enna in  an  imposing  procession,  with 
loud  expressions  of  regret  on  the  part 
of  the  populace,  she  was  received  on 
the  frontier  of  France  near  Kehl,  in  a 
splendid  pavilion  erected  for  the  occa 
sion,  on  a  small  island  in  the  Rhine. 
The  building  consisted  of  a  large 
saloon  with  two  inner  rooms,  one  of 
which  was  assigned  to  the  princess 
and  her  companions  from  Vienna,  the 
other  to  the  titled  personages  who 
were  to  compose  her  court  attendants 
in  Paris,  the  Countess  de  Noailles,  her 
lady  of  honor ;  the  Duchess  de  Cosse, 
her  tire  woman ;  four  ladies  of  the  bed- 
chamber; a  gentleman  usher,  and 
among  others,  the  Bishop  of  Chartres, 
her  chief  almoner.  Here  a  peculiar  cere- 
mony was  observed.  The  princess,  ac- 
cording to  prescribed  etiquette  was  dis- 
robed of  all  that  she  had  worn  on  the 
journey,  that  on  entering  the  new 
kingdom  she  might  retain  nothing  be- 
longing to  a  foreign  court.  When  par- 
tially undressed  she  came  forward  and 


MAEIE  ANTOINETTE. 


89 


threw  herself  into  the  arnu  of  the 
Countess  de  Noailles,  soliciting  ;n  the 
most  affectionate  manner  her  guidance 
and  support.  She  was  then  invested 
in  the  brilliant  paraphernalia  becom- 
ing her  position  at  the  French  court. 
Among  the  witnesses  of  these  festivi- 
ties on  the  Rhine  was  one  observer, 
whose  record  of  the  scene,  from  the 
part  he  was  afterwards  to  play  in  the 
world,  is  one  of  the  memorable  inci- 
dents of  history.  This  was  the  poet 
Groethe,  then  a  youth  of  twenty  who 
had  recently  come  to  pursue  his  uni- 
versity studies  at  Strasburg.  Sensi- 
tive then  as  ever  to  the  claims  and  as- 
sociations of  art,  he  tells  us  how  he 
was  shocked  to  see  in  the  costly  deco- 
rations of  the  pavilion,  the  cartoons  of 
Raphael,  worked  in  tapestry,  thrust 
into  the  side  chambers  while  the  main 
saloon  was  hung  with  tapestries 
worked  after  pictures  of  modern 
French  artists.  Nor  was  this  all.  The 
subjects  of  the  latter  struck  him  as  sin- 
gularly incongruous.  "  These  pictures 
were  the  history  of  Jason,  Medea  and 
Creusa  —  consequently  a  story  of  a 
most  wretched  marritge.  To  the  left 
of  the  throne  was  seen  the  bride 
struggling  against  a  horrible  death, 
surrounded  by  persons  full  of  sympa- 
thetic grief;  to  the  right  stood  the 
father,  horror-struck  at  the  murdered 
babes  at  his  feet ;  whilst  the  fury  in 
her  dragon  car,  drove  through  the  air. 
'  What ! '  I  exclaimed,  regardless  of 
bystanders ;  '  can  they  so  thoughtlessly 
place  before  the  eyes  of  a  young  queen, 
on  her  first  setting  foot  in  her  domin- 
ions, the  representation  of  the  most 
horrible  marriage  perhaps  that  ever 
was  consummated !  Is  there  among  the 
12 


architects  and  decorators  no  one  man 
who  understands  that  pictures  repre- 
sent something — that  they  work  upon 
the  mind  and  feelings — that  they  pro- 
duce impressions  and  excite  forebod- 
ings? It  is  as  if  they  had  sent  a 
ghastly  spectre  to  meet  this  lovely,  and 
as  we  hear  most  joyous,  lady  at  the 
very  frontiers ! '  "*  At  that  time  there 
was  in  the  gayety  of  the  scene  and  the 
French  court  little  encouragment  for 
foreboding,  and  if  any  attention  was 
paid  to  the  remonstrances  of  Goethe, 
it  was  probably  only  to  smile  at  the 
eagerness  of  the  youthful  dilettante 
art  student.  He  was  a  thinker,  how- 
ever, accustomed  to  penetrate  beneath 
the  surface  and  not  be  imposed  upon 
by  the  shows  of  things.  He  yielded 
willingly  everything  of  admiration 
which  could  be  demanded  for  the  in- 
teresting sight  of  the  young  princess 
whose  "  beauteous  and  lofty  mien,  as 
charming  as  it  was  dignified,"  he  after 
wards  recalled,  but  he  could  not  fail 
to  brand  in  his  satiric  verse  the  artifice 
by  which  a  show  of  prosperity  was 
kept  up  in  the  removing  far  from  sight 
of  the  gay  company,  the  halt,  the  lame 
and  the  blind,  who  might  have 
thronged  the  way.  In  some  lines  writ- 
ten in  French  he  contrasted  the  advent 
of  our  Saviour,  who  came  relieving 
the  sick  and  deformed,  with  that  of 
the  princess  at  which  the  unfortunate 
sufferers  were  made  to  disappear. 

Journeying  towards  the  capital  the 
princess  was  met  at  Compiegne  by  the 
reigning  monarch  with  his  grandsonj 
the  dauphin  to  whom  she  was  betroth- 
ed, and  by  whom  she  was  conducted 
to  Versailles,  where  the  marriage  took 
*  Life  of  Goethe,  by  Lewes,  Am.  Ed.,  Vol.  L,  p.  97. 


MARIE  ANTOINETTE. 


place  on  the  16th  of  May,  amidst  the 
:nost  imposing  festivities.  An  ill- 
Dmened  accident  however  marred  the 
rejoicings  in  Paris.  A  brilliant  display 
of  fireworks  was  to  be  exhibited  on 
the  Place  Louis  Quinze,  in  the  centre 
of  the  city,  and  a  huge  scaffold  had 
been  erected  for  the  purpose.  On  the 
night  of  the  expected  display  the  vast 
crowd  of  the  great  city  were  thronged 
round  the  spot  to  witness  the  brilliant 
show,  when  suddenly  the  platform  was 
liscovered  to  be  on  fire,  and  the  flames 
spread  with  rapidity,  setting  off  the 
fireworks  in  all  directions,  scattering 
death  and  terror  through  the  masses. 
The  injury  directly  inflicted  by  the  fly- 
ing bolts  was  terrific,  and  the  masses 
were  trampled  down  in  vain  efforts  to 
escape.  More  than  fifty  were  kill  ed,  and 
over  three  hundred  severely  wounded 
in  this  disaster.  The  newly  married 
dauphiness  was  at  this  moment  ap- 
proaching the  scene  to  share  in  the  en- 
joyments of  the  people.  She  showed 
her  feeling  for  the  calamity  by  joining 
with  her  husband  in  sending  their 
whole  income  for  the  year  to  the  fami- 
lies of  the  sufferers.  Moved  to  tears 
by  the  disaster,  one  of  the  ladies  her 
attendants,  to  relieve  her  thoughts  by 
substituting  another  emotion  than  that 
of  pity,  remarked  that  among  the  dead 
there  had  been  found  a  number  of 
thieves  with  their  pockets  filled  with 
watches  and  other  valuables  which 
they  had  stolen  in  the  crowd,  adding 
that  they  had  been  well  punished. 
"  Ah,  no  ! "  was  the  reply  of  the  dau- 
phiness, "  they  died  by  the  side  of 
honest  people." 

The  impression  made  upon  the  court 
and  people  by   the   dauphiness   was 


highly  favorable.  She  carried  herself, 
even  at  this  early  period,  with  an  ail 
of  grace  and  nobility.  Louis  XV., 
who  had  miserably  spent  his  life  in 
devotion  to  beauty  was  enchanted  with 
her.  "All  his  conversation,"  we  are 
told  by  Madame  Campan,  "  was  about 
her  graces,  her  vivacity,  and  the  apt- 
ness of  her  repartees.  She  was  yet 
more  successful  with  the  royal  family 
when  they  beheld  her  shorn  of  the 
splendor  of  the  diamonds  with  which 
she  had  been  adorned  during  the  ear- 
liest days  of  her  marriage.  When 
clothed  in  a  light  dress  of  gauze  or 
taffety,  she  was  compared  to  the  Ve- 
nus de  Medici  and  the  Atalanta  of  the 
Marly  gardens.  Poets  sang  her  charms, 
painters  attempted  to  copy  her  features. 
An  ingenious  idea  of  one  of  the  latter 
was  rewarded  by  Louis  XV.  The  pain- 
ter's fancy  had  led  him  to  place  the 
portrait  of  Marie  Antoinette  in  the 
heart  of  a  full-blown  rose.  This  ad- 
miration naturally  excited  the  jealousy 
of  the  profligate  court  favorite,  Madame 
du  Barry,  whose  political  influence  with 
the  king  was  still  powerful.  She  was 
opposed  to  the  minister,  the  Duke  of 
Choiseul,  and  with  his  fall  a  few  months 
after  the  wedding  of  the  dauphiness, 
the  latter  lost  a  much  needed  friendly 
supporter  and  guide '  to  her  inexperi- 
ence. Her  chief  adviser  was  now  the 
Abb6  de  Vermond,  who,  having  been 
her  tutor  before  marriage,  became  her 
private  secretary  and  confidant  after. 
"Intoxicated,"  writes  Madame  Cam- 
pan,  "  with  the  reception  he  had  met 
with  at  the  Court  of  Vienna.,  and  hav 
ing  till  then  seen  nothing  of  grandeur 
the  Abbe  de  Vermond  admired  and 
valued  no  other  iustoms  than  those  oi 


MAEIE  ANTOINETTE. 


91 


the  imperial  family;  lie  ridiculed  the 
etiquette  of  the  house  of  Bourbon  in- 
cessantly; the  young  dauphiness  was 
constantly  invited  by  his  sarcasms  to 
get  rid  of  it,  and  it  was  he  who  first 
induced  her  to  suppress  an  infinity  of 
practices  of  which  he  could  discern 
neither  the  prudence  nor  the  political 
aim."  The  court  was  ruled  by  eti- 
quette, and  that  of  the  most  tedious 
and  oppressive  character.  Nothing 
was  to  be  done  except  in  a  prescribed 
way  with  the  most  rigid  formalities. 
The  dauphiness,  gay  and  impulsive, 
and  natural  in  her  actions,  was  per- 
petually rebuked  by  the  chief  lady  of 
her  attendants,  or  rather  the  leading 
person  appointed  to  guard  her  move- 
ments, the  virtuous  and  ever  punctili- 
ous Countess  de  Noailles,  a  duenna 
worthy  of  the  old  court  of  Spain, 
where  these  personal  restrictions  were 
carried  to  their  utmost  possible  excess. 
The  lively  dauphiness  gave  this  lady 
the  title  of  Madame  1}  Etiquette, 
and  whenever  opportunity  presented, 
sought  relief  from  her  oppressive  cere- 
monial. Her  life  was  really  an  im- 
prisonment governed  by  oppressive 
court  usages,  which  all,  in  a  certain 
way,  the  king  and  his  mistresses  in- 
cluded, submitted  to,  while  they  were 
avowedly  violating  every  law  of  pro- 
priety and  morality  on  which  the  cus- 
toms were  founded.  It  is  pleasing  to 
read,  as  we  often  may,  in  the  accounts 
of  the  early  life  of  Marie  Antoinette, 
how  her  generous  nature  at  times  found 
vent  for  itself  in  extraordinary  acts  of 
kindness  and  charity.  Once,  when  she 
was  hunting  in  the  forest  of  Fontaine- 
bleau,  an  old  peasant  was  wounded  by 
the  stag  On  the  instant,  jumping  from 


her  open  carriage,  she  placed  the  injured 
man  in  it  with  his  wife  and  children  and 
had  the  family  taken  back  to  their  cot- 
tage. Some  little  time  after  she  was 
found  in  her  room  with  this  old  man, 
in  the  humblest  manner  staunching  the 
blood  which  issued  from  a  wound  in  his 
hand  with  her  handkerchief,  which  she 
had  torn  up  for  the  purpose.  He  had 
received  some  hurt  in  moving  a  heavy 
piece  of  furniture  at  her  request.  '  On 
another  later  occasion,  a  little  country 
boy,  four  or  five  years  old,  of  a  pleas- 
ing appearance,  with  large  blue  eyes 
and  fine  light  hair,  narrowly  escaped 
being  tramped  upon  by  getting  under 
the  feet  of  her  horses,  as  she  was 
driven  out  for  an  airing.  The  child 
was  saved,  and  its  grandmother  came 
out  of  her  cottage  by  the  roadside  to 
receive  it;  when  the  queen — for  the 
incident  occurred  after  she  had  come 
to  the  throne — stood  up  in  the  carriage 
and  claimed  the  boy  as  her  own,  put 
in  her  way  by  Providence.  Finding 
his  mother  was  not  alive,  she  under- 
took to  provide  for  him  herself,  and 
bore  him  home  on  her  knees,  the  boy 
violently  kicking  and  screaming  the 
whole  time.  A  few  days  afterwards 
he  was  to  be  seen  in  the  palace,  his 
woollen  cap  and  wooden  shoes  ex- 
changed for  the  court  finery  of  a  frock 
trimmed  with  lace,  a  rose-colored  sash 
with  silver  fringe,  and  a  hat  decorated 
with  feathers.  He  was  looked  aftei 
till  he  grew  up  and  displayed  some 
character,  joining  the  republican  army 
to  obviate  any  prejudice  which  might 
exist  against  him  as  the  queen's  favor 
ite,  and  meeting  his  death  at  the  bat- 
tle of  Jemappes. 

Acts  like  these  show  the  impulses  of 


92 


MARIE  ANTOINETTE. 


the  woman.  Though  in  her  early  years, 
while  she  was  simply  the  dauphiness,  she 
had  for  companions  the  two  brothers 
of  her  husband  with  their  princesses, 
they  were  compelled  to  maintain  the 
utmost  secrecy  in  so  simple  a  matter 
is  engaging  in  the  amusements  of  a 
theatrical  entertainment  among  them- 
selves, in  which  they  acted  the  chief 
parts,  the  dauphin  being  the  only  spec- 
tator. The  performance  had  at  least 
one  good  effect,  if,  as  is  stated,  it  awak- 
ened the  dauphin  to  a  proper  appre- 
ciation of  the  charming  qualities  of  his 
bride,  to  which  he  appeared  for  some 
time  after  their  marriage  to  have  been 
insensible. 

Now  came  the  event  which  was  to 
mark  an  era  in  the  breaking  up  of  the 
old  system.  Louis  XV.,  in  his  long 
reign  of  fifty  years,  commencing  with 
the  honorable  administration  of  Fleury, 
had  as  he  advanced  plunged  the  nation 
deeper  and  deeper  in  financial  embar- 
rassments, while  in  his  surrender  to  his 
discreditable  court  favorites  and  mis- 
tresses, the  Marchioness  de  Pompadour 
and  Madame  du  Barry,  and  other 
intrigues  of  the  vilest  character,  he 
had  set  the  nation  the  example  of  the 
grossest  licentiousness.  The  vices,  hand- 
ed down  in  a  long  succession  of  royal 
immoralities,  tolerated  in  history  by  a 
certain  outward  brilliancy,  had  culmi- 
nated in  the  utter  degradation  of  the 
court.  The  country  was  on  the  verge 
of  bankruptcy,  the  oppression  of  the 
privileged  classes  had  reached  its 
height;  the  whole  system  of  govern- 
ment was  rotten ;  and  if  the  nation  was 
to  be  preserved,  it  could  only  be  by 
the  casting  off  of  the  old,  and  the  infu- 
sion of  new  life  into  every  department 


of  the  administration.  At  this  crisis; 
at  the  age  of  twenty,  Louis  XVI.,  a 
pedantic  youth,  with  little  capacity  of 
insight  to  supply  the  lack  of  experi 
ence,  came  to  the  throne.  His  op- 
portunity consisted  solely  in  his  free- 
dom from  the  vices  of  his  grandfather. 
For  an  old  worn-out  debauchee  the 
nation  was  to  receive  as  its  head  an 
uncorrupted  well-meaning  youth ;  who 
also  brought  to  the  throne  in  exchange 
for  the  evil  influences  of  an  unprinci- 
pled courtesan,  who  had  been  elevated 
from  the  dregs  of  society,  the  hopes 
and  prestige  of  the  daughter  of  a  noble 
house  in  a  queen,  whose  beauty  and 
brilliant  bearing  might  well  have  warm- 
ed the  heart  of  the  most  gallant  country 
in  Europe.  In  other  times  they  might 
have  passed  through  this  exalted  life 
with  credit  to  themselves  and  glory  to 
the  nation.  In  the  age  in  which  their 
lot  was  cast,  two  things  were  wanting 
to  them,  a  thorough  comprehension  of 
the  needs  of  the  period,  with  ability  to 
direct  its  issues.  Failing  in  these,  their 
course  was  uncertain,  shifting,  insin- 
cere, and  though  not  without  a  pro- 
found pathetic  interest,  inevitably 
leading  to  the  most  ignominious  disas- 
ter. "  Beautiful  Highborn,"  chants 
the  prose  lyrist  of  our  modern  histori- 
cal literature,  Thomas  Carlyle,  when 
writing  of  Marie  Antoinette,  "  that 
wert  so  foully  hurled  low.  Thy  fault 
in  the  French  Revolution,  was  that 
thou  Avert  the  symbol  of  the  sin  and 
misery  of  a  thousand  years ;  that  with 
Saint  Bartholomews  and  Jacqueries, 
with  Gabelles  and  Dragonades  and 
Parcs-aux-cerfs,  the  heart  of  mankind 
was  filled  full, — and  foamed  over  into 
all-involving  madness.  To  no  Napo- 


MARIE  ANTOINETTE. 


93 


leon,  to  no  Cromwell  wert  thou  wed- 
ded :  such  sit  not  in  the  highest  rank  of 
themselves ;  are  raised  on  high  by  the 
shaking  and  confounding  of  all  ranks  ! 
As  poor  peasants,  how  happy,  worthy 
had  ye  two  been  !  But  by  evil  desti- 
ny ye  were  made  a  King  and  Queen 
of;  and  so  are  become  an  astonish- 
ment and  a  by-word  to  all  times." 

The  same  vivid  pen  has  pictured  in 
words  of  fire  the  horrors  of  the  death- 
bed of  the  departing  king,  and  the 
greedy  haste  of  the  courtiers  in  usher- 
ing in  his  successor.  "  Yes,  poor  Louis, 
Death  has  found  thee.  No  palace  walls 
or  life-guards,  gorgeous  tapestries  or 
gilt  buckram  of  stiffest  ceremonial  could 
keep  him  out ;  but  he  is  here,  here  at 
thy  very  life-breath,  and  will  extin- 
guish it.  Thou,  whose  whole  existence 
hitherto  was  a  chimera  and  scenic 
show,  at  length  becomest  a  reality; 
sumptuous  Versailles  bursts  asunder, 
like  a  dream,  into  void  immensity; 
time  is  done  and  all  the  scaffolding  of 
time  falls  wrecked  with  hideous  clan- 
gor round  thy  soul :  the  pale  kingdoms 
yawn  open;  there  must  thou  enter, 
naked,  all  unking'd,  and  await  what  is 
appointed  thee  !  Unhappy  man,  there 
as  thou  turnest,  in  dull  agony,  on  this 
bed  of  weariness,  what  a  thought  is 
thine  !  Purgatory  and  Hell-fire,  now 
all  too  possible,  in  the  prospect ;  in  the 
retrospect, — alas,  what  thing  dids't 
thou  do  that  were  not  better  undone ; 
what  mortal  didst  thou  generously 
help ;  what  sorrow  hadst  thou  mercy 
on  ?  Do  the  '  five  hundred  thousand' 
ghosts,  who  sank  shamefully  on  so 
many  battle-fields,  from  Rossbach  to 
Quebec,  that  thy  Harlot  might  take 
revenge  for  an  epigram,  —  crowd 


round  thee  in  this  hour?  Thy  foul 
Harem;  the  curses  of  mothers,  the 
tears  and  infamy  of  daughters  ?  Miser 
able  man !  thou  '  hast  done  evil  as 
thou  couldst  : '  thy  whole  existence 
seems  one  hideous  abortion  and  mis- 
take of  nature,  the  use  and  meaning  of 
thee  not  yet  known.  Wert  thou  a 
fabulous  Griffin  devouring  the  works 
of  men ;  daily  dragging  virgins  to  thy 
cave ; — clad  also  in  scales  that  no  spear 
would  pierce  ;  no  spear  but  Death's  ? 
A  griffin  not  fabulous  but  real ! 
Frightful,  O  Louis,  seem  these  moments 
for  thee.  *  *  *  It  is  now  the  10th 
of  May,  1774.  He  will  soon  have  done 
now.  This  tenth  May-day  falls  into 
the  loathsome  sick-bed ;  but  dull,  un- 
noticed there  :  for  they  that  look  out 
of  the  windows  are  quite  darkened ; 
the  cistern-wheel  moves  discordant  on 
its  axis ;  Life,  like  a  spent  steed,  is 
panting  towards  the  goal.  In  their 
remote  apartments  Dauphin  and  Dau- 
phiness  stand  road-ready ;  all  grooms 
and  equerries  booted  and  spurred: 
waiting  for  some  signal  to  escape  the 
house  of  pestilence.  And  hark  !  across 
the  (Eil-de-Beuf,  what  sound  is  that  ; 
sound  '  terribly,  and  absolutely  like 
thunder  ? '  It  is  the  rush  of  the  whole 
court,  rushing  as  in  wager,  to  salute 
the  new  Sovereigns.  Hail  to  your 
Majesties  !  The  Dauphin  and  Dau- 
phiness  are  King  and  Queen  !  Over- 
powered with  many  emotions,  they 
two  fall  on  their  knees  together,  and, 
with  streaming  tears,  exclaim  :  '  O  God, 
guide  us,  protect  us,  we  are  too  young 
to  reign.' "  * 

So   Marie   Antoinette    became    the 
Queen  of  France.     The  new  reign  was 

*  The  French  Revolution,  Book  I.,  Ch.  iv. 


94 


MAKIE  ANTOINETTE. 


hailed  with  acclamations  by  the  people. 
The  king  was  at  least  free  from  the 
gross  vices  of  his  predecessor,  and  the 
miserable  influence  of  such  creatures 
as  Du  Barry  was  at  an  end.  The 
government,  however,  could  not  as 
easily  throw  off  the  encumbrance  of 
the  vast  debt  which  the  preceding  pro- 
fligacy and  corruption  had  heaped  upon 
it.  Monopoly  and  restriction  every- 
where prevailed;  the  demands  upon 
the  people  in  one  form  or  another  of 
taxation  were  every  day  becoming 
greater,  while  the  means  of  paying 
them  were  less.  Every  department  of 
the  administration  was  encumbered 
with  privileged  abuses.  With  all  his 
insensibility,  the  new  sovereign  could 
not  fail  to  perceive  these  evils,  and  in 
the  appointment  of  the  experienced 
and  philosophic  Turgot,  an  economist 
in  advance  of  the  times,  to  the  high 
office  of  comptroller  general  of  finance, 
he  gave  a  pledge  to  the  people  that 
their  interests  would  not  be  disregard- 
ed. The  difficulties  and  embarrass- 
ments, ending  in  his  overthrow,  which 
the  minister  experienced  in  carrying 
out  his  work  of  reform,  which  con- 
sisted simply  in  abolishing  odious  re- 
strictions fettering  the  industry  of  the 
country,  and  reducing  the  expenditure, 
to  avoid  bankruptcy,  disclosed  the 
evils  under  which  the  nation  was  suf- 
fering from  the  oppression  of  the 
privileged  classes,  and  the^ittle  hope 
there  was  of  effecting  any  improve- 
ment with  their  concurrence.  They 
were  unwilling  to  yield  anything. 
The  court  also  was  embarrassed  by  its 
old  traditions  and  cumbrous  machinery 
of  ceremonial,  which,  outliving  its 
j  became  an  encouragement  of  the 


very  evils  it  was  originally  contrived 
to  prevent.  If  its  various  social  con- 
trivances had  one  object  to  secure  more 
than  another,  it  was  the  protection  of 
the  character  of  those  within  their 
sphere ;  but  the  whole  system  had  now 
degenerated  according  to  its  necessary 
tendencies  into  a  vexatious,  burden- 
some formalism,  inviting  suspicion, 
detraction  and  slander.  In  the  open 
life  of  most  court  circles  of  the  present 
day  the  character  of  Marie  Antoinette 
would  be  understood  and  appreciated, 
her  vivacity  or  folly  would  be  taken 
at  their  proper  value,  and  her  harmless 
freedoms,  though  they  might  subject 
her  to  the  charge  of  levity  and 
thoughtlessness  unbecoming  the  re- 
sponsibility of  her  station,  could  not, 
however  misrepresented,  long  be  mis- 
taken for  vice  and  criminality.  It  is 
singular,  showing  the  hold  the  court 
traditions  had  upon  the  mind  of  the 
French  people,  that,  while  they  were 
sighing  for  freedom  and  entertaining 
the  wildest  dreams  of  natural  liberty, 
they  were  holding  the  queen  to  the 
strictest  requirements  of  an  artificial 
court,  and  condemning  her  for  the  most 
innocent  actions.  On  one  occasion, 
early  in  her  reign,  she  expressed  a  de- 
sire to  see  the  sun  rise,  a  phenomenon 
which  she  had  never  before  witnessed, 
and  a  party  was  arranged  for  the 
purpose,  in  which  she  took  the  precau- 
tion to  include  the  ladies  attending  on 
her  person  to  accompany  her,  at  three 
o'clock  in  the  morning  to  the  heights  of 
the  gardens  of  Marly — a  simple  enough 
proceeding,  which  was  travestied  in  a 
wicked  and  licentious  ballad,  attri- 
buting to  her  the  worst  motives. 
This  was  circulated  by  her  enemies 


MARIE  ANTOINETTE. 


95 


wiio  never  lost  an  opportunity  of  ca- 
lumniating her.  Instances  of  this  kind 
might  be  multiplied  from  her  Memoirs. 
The  motive  of  such  hostilities  appears 
to  have  been  supplied  in  the  jealousies 
of  various  ladies  about  the  court  whom 
she  had  taken  little  pains  to  conciliate, 
in  the  general  dislike  to  the  Austrian 
alliance,  and,  when  the  question  of 
political  liberty  was  fully  before  the 
people,  her  natural  dfnd  irrepressible 
leaning  to  the  cause  of  the  aristocracy 
and  monarchy. 

It  is  curious  to  note  the  etiquette 
which  was  practised  at  the  French 
court  in  the  days  immediately  preced- 
ing the  Revolution.  One  of  the  cus- 
toms which  Marie  Antoinette  abolish- 
ed in  coming  to  the  throne  was  that  of 
dining  every  day  in  public,  when,  ac- 
cording to  ancient  usage,  the  queen 
was  waited  upon  only  by  persons  of 
her  own  sex,  titled  ladies,  who  pre- 
sented the  plates  kneeling — a  spectacle 
highly  attractive  to  country  people, 
who  had  thronged  to  see  the  dau- 
phiness  undergoing  this  ceremony. 
There  were  others  of  a  more  private 
nature  which  she  could  not  so  well 
escape.  Madam  Campan  gives  an 
amusing  account  of  the  absurd  pro- 
ceedings attending  the  queen's  toilette. 
"It  was  a  master-piece  of  etiquette; 
every  thing  done  on  the  occasion  was 
in  a  prescribed  form.  Both  the  lady  of 
honor  and  the  tire- woman  usually  at- 
tended and  officiated,  assisted  by  the 
first  femme  de  chambre  and  two  in- 
ferior attendants.  The  tire- woman  put 
on  the  petticoat,  and  handed  the  gown 
to  the  queen.  The  lady  of  honor 
poured  out  the  water  for  her  hands, 
and  put  on  her  body  linen.  When  a 


princess  of  the  royal  family  happened 
to  be  present  while  the  queen  was 
dressing,  the  lady  of  honor  yielded  tc 
her  the  latter  act  of  office,  but  still  did 
not  yield  it  directly  to  the  princess  of 
the  blood ;  in  such  a  case,  the  lady  of 
honor  was  accustomed  to  present  the 
linen  to  the  chief  lady  in  waiting,  who, 
in  her  turn,  handed  it  to  the  princess 
of  the  blood.  Each  of  these  ladies 
observed  these  rules  scrupulously,  as 
affecting  her  rights.  One  winter's  day 
it  happened  that  the  queen,  who  was 
entirely  undressed,  was  just  going  to 
put  on  her  body  linen  ;  I  held  it  ready 
unfolded  for  her ;  the  lady  of  honor 
came  in,  slipped  off  her  gloves,  and 
took  it.  A  rustling  was  heard  at  the 
door ;  it  was  opened  :  and  in  came  the 
Duchess  d'Orleans ;  she  took  her  gloves 
off,  and  came  forward  to  take  the  gar- 
ment ;  but  as  it  would  have  been  wrong 
in  the  lady  of  honor  to  hand  it  to  her, 
she  gave  it  to  me,  and  I  handed  it  to 
the  princess :  a  further  noise — it  was 
the  Countess  de  Provence  ;  the  Duchess 
d'Orleans  handed  her  the  linen.  All  this 
while  the  queen  kept  her  arms  crossed 
upon  her  bosom,  and  appeared  to  feel 
cold :  Madame  observed  her  uncom- 
fortable situation,  and  merely  laying 
down  her  handkerchief,  without  taking 
off  her  gloves,  she  put  on  the  linen,  and 
in  doing  so  knocked  the  queen's  cap 
off.  The  queen  laughed  to  conceal  hei 
impatience,  but  not  until  she  had  mut- 
tered several  times  :  '  How  disagree- 
able !  how  tiresome  ! ' 

It  is  not  surprising  that  the  queen 
uttered  this  exclamation,  for  the  pecu- 
liar incident  just  related  was  but  one 
of  a  series  of  similar  annoyances,  which 
in  one  relation  or  another  might  hap 


96 


MARIE  ANTOINETTE. 


pen  any  hour  of  the  day.     From  morn 
ing  till  night,  before  she  arose  and  after 
she  was  installed  in  her  royal  bed,  eti- 
quette was  continually  at  her  elbow. 
The  manoeuvres  of  the  toilet  were  more 
circumstantial  than  the  rites  of  an  an- 
cient Roman  sacrifice,  and  quite  as  sa- 
cred and  obligatory.     This  matter  of 
dress  was  an  affair  of  the  highest  mo- 
ment, a  sort  of  public  transaction  taking 
place  at  high  noon,  a  state  performance 
to  be  witnessed  in  due  order  and  se- 
quence by  princes  of  the  blood,  cap- 
tains of  the  guards  and  other  great 
officers.  The  king's  brothers,  the  Count 
de  Provence  and  the  Count  d'  Artois, 
we  read,  came  very  generally  to  pay 
their  respects  while  the  queen's  hair 
was  dressing,  and  if  these  princes  had 
any  sense  of  humor,  it  must  have  been 
something  amazing  to  them  to  witness 
the  erection  on  the  human  head  of  that 
proud  edifice,   puffed   up    by   hidden 
contrivances  and  decorated  by  such  su- 
perb millinery  and  flower  and  feather- 
work  beyond  the  art  of  any  painted 
savage.     The  queen,   it   must   be   ac- 
knowledged, took  kindly  to  this  species 
of  manufacture.     Early  in  her  reign, 
by  the  kind  intervention  of  the  Duchess 
de  Chartres,  contrary  to  all  precedent, 
a  famous  milliner  from  the  outer  world 
of  the  great  city,  Mademoiselle  Bertin, 
was  introduced  into  the  royal  house- 
hold, with  whom  the  queen  planned  an 
infinity  of  new  dresses, — a  new  fashion 
eyery  day,  to  the  equal  delight  and 
distraction  of  the  fashionable  society 
of  Paris.     "  Every  one,"  we  are   told, 
"  wished  to  have  the  same  dress  as  the 
queen,  and  to  wear  the  feathers  and 
flowers  to  which  her  beauty,  then  in 
its  brilliancy,    lent   an   indescribable 


charm.  The  expenditure  of  youiis 
women  was  necessarily  much  increased ; 
mothers  and  1  usbands  murmured  at  it ; 
some  giddy  women  contracted  debts, 
unpleasant  domestic  scenes  occurred; 
in  many  families  quarrels  arose;  in 
others,  affection  was  extinguished ;  and 
the  general  report  was,  that  the  queen 
would  be  the  ruin  of  all  the  French 
ladies." 

Connected  with  this  extravagance 
of  dress  there  arose  a  great  scandal, 
much  to  the  detriment  of  the  queen, 
though,  in  reality,  she  was  not  at  all 
responsible  for  it.  This  was  the  com 
plicated  affair,  famous  in  law  and  his- 
tory, of  The  Diamond  Necklace,  a  curi- 
ous embroglio  of  roguery,  implicating 
various  notable  personages,  and  for  a 
time  apparently  the  queen,  while  she 
suffered  not  for  any  act  of  her  own  but 
for  being  involved  in  an  evil  system 
of  things  which  rendered  so  stupen- 
dous a  fraud  a  possible  achievement. 
The  story  at  every  turn  of  its  many 
involutions,  throws  a  wondrous  light 
upon  the  state  of  society  in  France  at 
the  period.  We  can  but  indicate  its 
general  outline,  referring  the  reader 
for  the  entire  plot  to  the  energetic  dra- 
matic dithyrambic  narrative  of  Car- 
lyle.  The  main  agent  in  the  plot, 
though  not  the  prime  mover,  was  that 
strange  personage,  of  the  dying  mon- 
archy, Prince  Louis  de  Rohan,  a  profli- 
gate nobleman  who  had  by  family  in- 
fluence  and  intrigue  gathered  to  him- 
self a  great  many  extraordinary  honors 
and  distinctions  with  splendid  emolu- 
ments,Archbishop  of  Strasbourg,  Grand 
Almoner  of  France,  Commander  of  the 
Holy  Ghost,  Cardinal,  Commendatorot 
St.  Wast  d' Arras,  "  one  of  the  fattest 


MARIE  ANTOINETTE. 


97 


benefices,"  says  Carlyle,  "  here  below." 
In  the  early  part  of  his  career  he  had 
been  remarkable  for  his  dissipation; 
as  he  advanced  in  life,  he  played  the 
courtier  and  became  ambitious.  At 
the  age  of  thirty-six  he  had  the  honor 
on  behalf  of  the  nation  of  receiving 
Marie  Antoinette  on  her  first  arrival 
in  France,  and  subsequently,  while  she 
remained  the  dauphiness,  was  sent  am- 
bassador to  Vienna,  where  he  main- 
tained an  amazing  style  of  pomp  and 
display,  till  his  extravagance  brought 
him  deeply  in  debt.  He  was  no  favor- 
ite with  the  empress  queen,  who  de- 
spised his  profligacy,  so  unbecoming 
his  sacred  character,  and  would  have 
had  him  recalled.  He  moreover  of- 
fended the  dauphiness  by  a  witticism 
in  one  of  his  dispatches  reflecting  on 
her  mother  in  relation  to  one  of  the 
least  defensible  acts  of  her  reign,  de- 
scribing Maria  Theresa  standing  with 
the  handkerchief  in  one  hand  weeping 
for  the  woes  of  Poland,  and  with  the 
sword  in  the  other  ready  to  divide  the 
land  and  take  her  share.  This  was  sent 
to  the  last  minister  of  Louis  XV.,  D' 
Aiguillon,  who  communicated  it  to  the 
king  and  he  to  Du  Barry,  when  it 
became  the  jest  of  the  day  among  the 
courtiers.  Marie  Antoinette,  it  is  said, 
never  forgave  this.  She  may  very  well, 
too,  have  had  a  natural  dislike  to  the 
perpetrator  of  the  sarcasm.  However 
this  may  be,  when  she  became  queen, 
De  Rohan,  greatly  to  his  chagrin,  was 
refused  admittance  at  court.  To  be 
compelled  to  remain  outside  of  that 
charmed  circle  was  a  perpetual  torment 
to  a  man  of  his  tastes  and  dispositions. 
His  rapid  preferments  and  rise  to  the 
dignity  of  Lord  Cardinal  would  seem 
13 


to  have  made  him  little  amends  for  the 
exclusion. 

We  are  now  to  be  introduced  to  an 
other  personage,  more  remarkable  in 
her  way  than  the  cardinal  in  his,  a 
bold  adventuress,  one  of  the  boldest 
who  ever  displayed  the  arts  and  capa- 
city of  unsexed  womanhood.  This  was 
the  Countess  Lamotte,  as  she  was  call- 
ed, with  royal  blood  in  her  veins,  in  an 
illegitimate  way,  a  descendant  of  one 
of  the  numerous  mistresses  of  Henry  II. 
of  France.  Her  ancestor,  Saint  Remi, 
had  been  enriched  and  the  family  had 
kept  up  its  state  for  several  genera- 
tions till  it  had  fallen  into  utter  worth- 
lessness  and  bankruptcy,  and  its  latest 
representative,  Jeanne,  a  little  girl,  is 
one  day  picked  up,  a  beggar  on  the 
highway,  by  the  Countess  Boulainvil- 
liers,  and  under  her  patronage  becomes, 
to  quote  the  nomenclature  of  Carlyle, 
"  a  nondescript  of  mantua-maker,  sou- 
brette,  court  beggar,  fine  lady,  abigail, 
and  scion-of-royalty," — a  person,  in  fine, 
with  natural  and  acquired  tastes,  pas- 
sions and  propensities,  needing  of  all 
things  money  for  their  support.  As  a 
compliment  to  her  royal  ancestry,  the 
court,  grown  economical  or  indifferent, 
after  so  many  generations,  grants  her  a 
poor  thirty  pounds  a-year.  Looking 
round  for  ways  and  means,  her  first 
thought  is  to  visit  the  place  of  the 
alienated  possessions  of  her  family,  in 
hopes  to  discover  possible  flaws  in  the 
title,  which  comes  to  nothing.  All  that 
she  gains  there  is  a  husband,  a  private 
in  the  army,  and  thus  she  becomes 
Madame  Lamotte,  or,  as  she  styles  her- 
self, dignifying  her  plebeian  help-mate, 
the  Countess  Lamotte.  A  few  years 
pass.  Lamotte  is  no  longer  a  soldier, 


MARIE  ANTOINETTE. 


his  wife's  patroness,  the  Countess,  is 
dead,  and  with  her  pension  about  dou- 
bled, all  insufficient  for  her  wants,  Ma- 
dame, or  the  Countess  Lamotte  is  living 
in  humble  quarters  on  the  edge  of  the 
sourt  in  the  town  of  Versailles.  Still, 
with  an  eye  to  her  family  deserts  or 
pretensions,  she  one  day  goes  to  his 
eminence,  the  Cardinal  Rohan,  a  proper 
person  as  she  thinks,  in  his  capacity  of* 
Grand  Almoner  to  gain  her  some  more 
adequate  allowance  from  the  royal 
treasury.  The  cardinal,  affected  doubt- 
less by  her  piquant  address, — for,  with- 
out being  beautiful,  she  had  a  coun- 
tenance which  her  intellect  or  artful 
manners  could  make  attractive, — was 
moved  to  reply,  not  by  an  advance  of 
money,  of  which,  with  all  his  revenues, 
he  appears  never  to  have  had  any  sur- 
plus, but  with  the  advice  to  appeal  to 
the  queen.  In  recommending  this  re- 
source, he  expressed  his  great  disap- 
pointment that  he  had  not  access  to  her 
presence  to  assist  in  the  application. 
Lamotte,  whose  natural  keenness  ad- 
versity had  sharpened,  saw  thoroughly 
into  the  character  of  the  cardinal,  and 
gigantic  as  the  game  was,  quite  unap- 
proachable to  a  meaner  intellect,  resolv- 
ed in  the  consciousness  of  her  strength 
to  make  him  her  dupe.  Her  knowledge 
of  the  court  and  her  means  of  access  to 
several  of  its  inferior  servants,  with 
the  occurrence  at  this  time  of  an  extra- 
ordinary opportunity,  were  the  means, 
to  her,  all  things  considered,  of  one  of 
the  boldest  and  most  successful  at- 
tempts ever  made  on  human  credulity. 
The  opportunity  was  the  chance  in 
gome  dexterous  way  of  getting  posses- 
sion of  a  necklace  of  diamonds,  quite 
capable  of  being  converted  into  the 


handsome  sum  of  about  four  hundred 
thousand  dollars  in  gold,  for  such  a 
thing  is  not  to  be  profared  by  estima- 
ting it  in  a  paper  currency.  Allowing 
for  the  difference  of  values,  it  might 
probably  be  estimated  in  this  year, 
1872,  at  about  half  a  million.  The 
preparation  of  this  magnificent  work 
had  been  the  one  idea,  to  surpass  all 
Bothers  of  his  princely  constructions  of 
this  sort,  of  the  court  jeweler,  M.  Boch- 
mer.  He  had  held  that  position  in  the 
days  of  Louis  XV.,  and  the  necklace 
was  his  chef  d 'euvre,  not  too  expensive 
for  the  enormous  waste  of  that  era,  or 
for  the  revenues  lavished  upon  the 
court  mistress  Du  Barry,  for  whose  or- 
namentation it  had  been  intended.  As 
pictured  in  an  ordinary  representation 
before  us  in  common  printers'  ink  from 
a  wood-cut,  it  quite  glorifies  the  page 
with  its  sparkling  drops  of  light.  It 
must  have  been  indeed  a  brilliant  ob- 
ject to  look  upon.  Here  is  Carlyle's 
description  of  it  from  the  engraving. 
"A  row  of  seventeen  glorious  dia- 
monds, as  large  almost  as  filberts,  en- 
circle,  not  too  tightly,  the  neck,  a  first 
time.  Looser,  gracefully  fastened  thrice 
to  these,  a  three-wreathed  festoon,  and 
pendants  enough  (simple  pear-shaped, 
multiple  star-shaped,  or  clustering  am- 
orphous) encircle  it,  enwreath  it,  a  sec- 
ond time.  Loosest  of  all,  softly  flowing 
round  from  behind,  in  priceless  cate- 
nary, rush  down  two  broad  threefold 
rows ;  seem  to  knot  themselves  round 
a  very  queen  of  diamonds  on  the  bo 
som ;  then  rush  on,  again  separated,  a& 
if  there  were  length  in  plenty ;  the  very 
tassels  of  them  were  a  fortune  for  some 
men.  And  now  lastly,  two  other  in 
expressible  threefold  rows,  also  with 


MAEIE  ANTOINETTE. 


99 


their  tassels,  will,  when  the  necklace  is 
on  and  clasped,  unite  themselves  be- 
hind into  a  doubly  inexpressible  six- 
fold row ;  and  so  stream  down,  together 
or  asunder,  over  the  hind-neck, — we 
may  fancy,  like  lambent  Zodiacal  or 
Aurora-Borealis  fire." 

A  work  like  this,  in  tradesman's 
phrase,  was  locking  up  a  great  deal  of 
money,  and  its  owner,  a  tradesman, 
must  needs  be  anxious  for  its  sale.  It 
was  naturally  offered  at  the  new  court 
— something  worthy  the  attire  of  the 
youthful  brilliant  Austrian  queen,  but 
though  there  were  vanity  and  expense 
enough  left,  retrenchment  was  the 
order  of  the  day,  and,  in  comparison 
with  previous  reigns,  royalty  was  poor 
and  parsimonious.  Earlier  ministers 
of  finance  might  have  managed  it,  but 
the  budgets  of  Turgot  and  Necker  had 
no  place  for  such  an  item,  and  the 
people  were  on  the  track  of  these  ex- 
travagances with  a  fearful  vengeance 
in  store.  To  the  credit  of  Marie  An- 
toinette, she  gave  no  countenance  to 
its  acceptance,  remarking,  on  the  pro- 
iect  being  brought  before  her,  that 
"we  have  more  need  of  seventy-fours 
than  of  necklaces."  She  advised  its 
being  broken  up ;  but  this  was  to  sac- 
rifice the  idea  of  its  constructor.  He 
was  not  yet  ready  to  abandon  the 
greatest  achievement  of  his  career.  He 
would  not,  or  could  not,  solve  the  pro- 
blem for  himself.  There  was  one,  how- 
ever, at  hand  ready  enough  to  do  it — 
the  Countess  Lamotte,  both  able  and 
willing.  A  necessary  preliminary,  the 
cardinal,  was  already  in  her  toils.  Re- 
turning to  De  Rohan  a  few  days  after 
the  interview  in  which  he  had  advised 
her  to  have  recourse  to  the  queen,  she 


informs  him  that  she  had  obtained  ad- 
mittance to  her,  been  favorably  re- 
ceived, and  taken  the  opportunity  to 
speak  of  the  grief  of  the  cardinal  in 
his  exclusion  from  the  royal  favor,  and 
obtain  permission  to  present  his  vindi- 
cation. The  cardinal  accordingly 
made  her  the  medium  of  his  apology, 
and  received  in  return  a  note,  appa 
rently  in  the  queen's  writing,  expres- 
sing her  satisfaction  at  learning  that 
he  was  innocent,  and  promising  at 
some  indefinite  future  time  the 
audience  he  solicited,  in  the  mean 
time  enjoining  him  to  be  discreet. 
The  bait  was  swallowed,  and  hence- 
forth the  cardinal,  who  of  all  men  on 
earth  should  have  had  the  best  eye  for 
trickery,  was  but  a  puppet  in  the 
hands  of  this  intriguing  woman.  The 
correspondence  was  continued  ad  libi- 
tum, the  artful  messenger,  from  her 
ready  resources,  having  a  supply  of 
sufficiently  specious  answers  ready  on 
demand.  Presently,  in  judicious  se- 
quence, the  money  card  is  played  and 
wins.  The  queen  commissions  the 
Grand  Almoner  to  borrow  for  her  sixty 
thousand  francs  for  a  charitable  object, 
and  the  sum  is  paid,  as  requested,  into 
the  hands  of  Lamotte.  A  second  ap- 
plication for  a  like  sum  succeeds 
equally  well — payments  for  the  time 
being  made  in  royal  letters  of  thanks. 
The  Lamottes,  thus  handsomely  pro- 
vided with  the  means,  set  up  an  es- 
tablishment at  Versailles,  and,  that  the 
cardinal  might  not  observe  it,  and  thus 
have  his  suspicions  aroused,  he  is  saga- 
ciously advised  by  a  letter  from  the 
queen  to  visit  his  diocese  in  Alsace, 
which  he  does. 

Successful    negotiations   like   these 


100 


MAKIE  ANTOINETTE. 


encouraged  a  move  to  get  possession 
of  the  necklace,  a  fascinating  object 
sufficient  to  call  forth  the  best  powers 
of  the  most  consummate  roguery. 
Her  show  of  living  at  Versailles  being 
attributed  to  favors  received  from  the 
queen,  Lamotte,  through  an  emissary, 
began  to  approach  the  jeweler  Boch- 
mer  on  the  subject  of  the  diamonds, 
and  gets  him  to  think  she  might  assist 
in  the  negotiation  at  court.  Presently 
she  announces  to  him  that  an  eminent 
personage  has  been  commissioned  to 
purchase  on  behalf  of  the  crown.  The 
cardinal  is  sent  for,  and  on  his  arrival 
in  Paris  is  told  that  the  queen  wishes 
him,  as  a  special  mark  of  her  favor,  to 
buy  the  necklace  for  her  without  the 
knowledge  of  her  husband,  and  that 
she  will  pay  for  it  out  of  her  income. 
He  receives  an  authorization  from  her, 
pledges  himself  for  the  whole  amount, 
promises  quarterly  payments,  and  the 
jewelers  seeing  the  queen's  authority, 
and  understanding  that  he  is  acting 
confidentially  for  her,  place  the  neck- 
lace in  his  hands.  Arrangements  are 
now  made  for  the  delivery  of  the  jewel. 
This  Lamotte  contrives  shall  take  place 
at  her  house  at  Versailles,  to  be  there 
given  by  her  to  a  messenger  of  the 
queen,  the  cardinal  being  present  to 
witness  the  transaction.  He  arrives  at 
dusk  with  a  valet  bearing  the  casket 
containing  the  necklace;  it  is  placed 
in  her  hands,  and  the  confidential  valet 
of  the  queen  arriving,  receives  it  and 
bears  it  away — the  cardinal  looking 
through  the  glazed  window  of  an  al- 
cove in  the  apartment,  satisfying  him- 
self of  the  identity  of  the  receiver.  It 
is  high  time  for  some  recognition  from 
the  queen.  This  is  prettily  prepared 


by  Lamotte  in  evasive  approaches  tc 
an  interview.  On  a  previous  occasion 
the  cardinal  had  accompanied  her  in  a 
midnight  visit  to  the  gardens  of  \rer 
sailles — there  being  much  talk  and 
idle  scandal  of  the  queen's  summer 
walks  and  musical  parties  there  at  that 
hour,  and  as  he  appeared  to  be  near 
j  the  royal  person  in  the  obscurity,  she 
hurries  away  seemingly  frightened  at 
the  approach  of  some  members  of  the 
court,  dropping,  however  a  rose  for  his 
eminence,  with  the  cheering  words: 
"  You  know  what  that  means."  This, 
though  evasive  as  the  pursuit  of  the 
unapproachable  in  dreams,  feeds  his 
hopes  for  the  time.  When  the  neck- 
lace has  been  delivered,  Lamotte  in- 
vites the  cardinal  to  take  his  place 
among  the  courtiers  in  the  gallery  of 
the  CEil-de-Boeuf,  where  she  has  ob 
served  the  queen  has  a  customary 
motion  of  the  head  as  she  passes 
through  the  throng  on  her  way  to  the 
chapel.  This  of  course  is  to  be  inter 
preted  as  a  special  mark  of  regard  for 
the  cardinal.  He  perceives  it,  and 
accepts  it  as  such.  Another  royal 
mandate  again  sends  him  out  of  the 
way  to  Alsace,  while  Lamotte  de- 
spatches the  necklace  to  her  husband 
in  London,  where  it  is  broken  up  and 
sold  for  the  benefit  of  the  conspirators. 
The  day  of  payment  now  arrives,  and 
the  jeweler  looks  to  the  cardinal ;  out 
of  the  proceeds  of  the  jewels  Lamotte 
produces  a  sum  of  money  as  interest, 
and  the  principal  is  not  forthcoming 
Meanwhile  the  jewelers  have  made 
their  acknowledgments  for  the  trans- 
action at  court,  where  nothing  of  course 
is  known  about  it,  and  the  whole  bur- 
den is  thrown  upon  the  cardinal.  At 


MAEIE  ANTOINETTE. 


101 


length,  in  August,  1785,  a  year  and  a 
half  after  the  beginning  of  those  trans- 
actions with  Lamotte — so  long  had  he 
been  the  victim  of  pretences  and  for- 
geries— the  cardinal  is  summoned  to 
the  presence  of  the  king  and  queen, 
and  confronted  by  the  depositions  of 
the  jewelers  and  the  financier  from 
whom  he  had  borrowed  money  for  the 
queen.  He  pleads  the  royal  authority 
for  his  act,  and  the  writing  on  which 
he  relies  is  pronounced  a  forgery.  He 
is  arrested  and  sent  to  the  Bastille, 
whither  shortly  the  Countess  Lamotte 
is  sent  after  him.  Not  long  after,  Vil- 
lette,  who  personated  the  queen's  valet, 
and  Mademoiselle  Leguet,  who  repre- 
sented the  queen  herself  in  the  gardens 
of  Versailles,  the  deceivers  of  the  car- 
dinal, are  also  arrested.  The  plot  now 
becomes  clearer,  and,  when  the  whole 
case  is  before  the  court,  the  prince  car- 
dinal is  acquitted  of  fraud,  though 
sent  into  exile  by  the  king  for  his 
mischievous  absurdities,  while  Lamotte 
expiates  her  wickedness  with  flogging, 
branding  on  both  shoulders,  and  a 
sentence  of  imprisonment  for  life, 
which  is  not  fully  executed,  for  after  a 
while  she  escapes  to  England,  and  one 
day,  from  some  unseemly  cause,  is 
found  precipitated  from  a  high  win- 
dow to  the  street  pavement,  which 
ends  her  remarkable  career. 

Anecdotes  might  be  multiplied  of 
the  gay  life  of  the  court  during  the 
first  ten  or  fifteen  years  of  the  new 
reign,  of  the  festive  entertainments  at 
Versailles,  of  the  queen's  innocent 
pastoral  amusements  in  her  little  re- 
treat of  the  Petit  Trianon,  where  she 
sought  to  realize  that  rustic  simplicity 
which  had  been  the  dream  of  the  poets 


of  the  age — a  court  simplicity,  howev- 
er, with  music  from  the  opera,  in  the 
background,  laces  and  ribbons  un 
known  to  the  genuine  Arcadia,  and 
the  graces  and  affectations  of  the  fash 
ionable  world ;  but  we  must  refer  the 
reader  for  these  things  to  the  gossiping 
pages  of  Madame  Campan.  In  her  Me- 
moirs, much  may  be  read  of  the  petty 
jealousies  of  the  court,  great  often  in 
their  results ;  of  the  gradual  ascendan- 
cy gained  by  the  queen  over  her  hus- 
band, who  at  first  neglected  her;  of 
ber  intimacy  with  the  members  of  her 
household,  the  Princess  de  Lamballe 
and  the  Countess  de  Polignac ;  of  her 
mortification  in  the  early  years  of  her 
reign  when  she  was  childless,  and  of 
the  delight  of  the  nation,  when  after 
the  birth  of  a  princess  in  1778,  in  1781 
an  heir  was  born  to  the  throne.  On 
the  latter  occasion,  the  artificers  and 
traders  of  Paris  went  to  Versailles  in 
a  body,  carrying  the  various  insignia 
of  their  callings,  with  some  humorous 
accessories.  Even  the  chimney  sweep- 
ers, we  are  told,  turned  out,  "  quite  as 
well  dressed  as  those  that  appear  upon 
the  stage,  carrying  an  ornamented 
chimney,  at  the  top  of  which  was  perch- 
ed one  of  the  smallest  of  their  fra- 
ternity. The  chairmen  carried  a  sedan, 
highly  gilt,  in  which  were  to  be  seen 
a  handsome  nurse  and  a  little  dauphin. 
The  smiths  hammered  away  upon  an 
anvil,  the  shoemakers  finished  off  a 
little  pair  of  boots  for  the  dauphin, 
and  the  tailors  a  little  suit  of  the  uni- 
form of  his  regiment.  The  king  en- 
joyed the  sight  for  a  long  time  from 
the  balcony.  So  general  was  the  en- 
thusiasm that  (the  police  not  having 
carefully  examined  the  procession)  the 


102 


MAKIE  ANTOINETTE. 


grave-diggers  had  the  impudence  to  send 
their  deputation  also,  with  the  emble- 
matic devices  of  their  ill-omened  occu- 
pation " — ill  omened  surely,  if  read  by 
the  light  of  the  dire  revolutionary  pro- 
ceedings of  the  few  succeeding  years. 
The  market  women  were  received — 
a  deputation  from  them  —  into  the 
queen's  bed-room,  one  of  them  read- 
ing to  her  an  address  written  by  La 
Harpe,  piquantly  engraved  on  the  in- 
side of  a  fan,  which  she  handed  to  her 
without  any  embarrassment.  This  was 
peculiarly  French.  Fancy  an  English 
market  -  woman  approaching  Queen 
Victoria  on  such  an  occasion  in  that 
style  !  The  fish  -  women,  the  pois- 
wrdes,  spoke  their  addresses  and  sang 
their  songs  in  honor  of  the  event,  with 
abundant  good  humor  and  gayety.  Fol- 
lowing upon  these  rejoicings  came  the 
bustle  and  stir  of  the  American  war, 
which  the  queen  is  said  to  have  made 
popular  at  court,  favoring  the  negotia- 
tor Beaumarchais,  and  humoring  the 
extraordinary  attentions  paid  to  Frank- 
lin. The  time  came  when  she  looked 
back  upon  this  enthusiasm  as  a 
source  of  evil  to  the  dynasty  in  the 
encouragement  of  the  democracy  which 
was  sweeping  away  old  institutions; 
but  meantime  the  danger  was  unsus- 
pected, and  France  was  avenged  on 
the  American  continent  for  her  loss  of 
Canada  to  England. 

The  personal  appearance  of  the  queen 
at  this  time  has  been  described  by  La- 
martine :  "  On  her  arrival  in  France,  her 
beauty  had  dazzled  the  whole  kingdom, 
a  beauty  then  in  all  its  splendor.  The 
two  children  whom  she  had  given  to 
the  throne,  far  from  impairing  her 
good  looks,  added  to  the  attractions 


of  her  person,  that  character  of  mater- 
nal majesty  which  so  well  becomes  the 
mother  of  a  nation.  The  presentiment 
of  misfortunes,  the  recollection  of  the 
tragic  scenes  of  Versailles,  the  uneasi- 
ness of  each  day  somewhat  diminished 
her  youthful  freshness.  She  was  tall, 
slim  and  graceful, — a  real  daughter  of 
Tyrol.  Her  naturally  majestic  car- 
riage in  no  way  impaired  the  grace  of 
her  movements:  her  neck  rising  ele- 
gantly and  distinctly  from  her  shoul 
ders  gave  expression  to  every  attitude. 
The  woman  was  perceptible  beneath 
the  queen,  the  tenderness  of  heart  was 
not  lost  in  the  elevation  of  her  destiny 
Her  light  brown  hair  was  long  and 
silky,  her  forehead,  high  and  rather 
projecting,  was  united  to  her  temples 
by  those  fine  curves  which  give  so 
much  delicacy  and  expression  to  that 
seat  of  thought  or  the  soul  in  women ; 
her  eyes  of  that  clear  blue  which  recall 
the  skies  of  the  North  or  the  waters  of 
the  Danube;  an  aquiline  nose,  with 
nostrils  open  and  slightly  projecting 
where  emotions  palpitate  and  courage 
is  evidenced ;  a  large  mouth,  bril- 
liant teeth,  Austrian  lips,  that  is,  pro- 
jecting and  well  defined;  an  oval 
countenance,  animated,  varying,  im 
passioned,  and  the  ensemble  of  these 
features  replete  with  that  expression, 
impossible  to  describe,  which  emanates 
from  the  look,  the  shades,  the  reflec- 
tions of  the  face,  which  encompasses 
with  an  iris,  like  that  of  the  wnrm  and 
tinted  vapor  which  bathes  objects  in 
full  sunlight — the  extreme  loveliness 
which  the  ideal  conveys,  and  which 
by  giving  it  life  increases  its  attrac- 
tion. With  all  these  charms,  a  soul 
yearning  to  attach  itself  a  heart  easi- 


MAEIE  ANTOINETTE. 


103 


ly  moved,  but  yet  earnest  in  desire  to 
itself;  a  pensive  and  intelligent  smile, 
with  nothing  of  vacuity  in  it,  nothing 
of  preference  or  mere  acquaintanceship 
in  it,  because  it  felt  itself  worthy  of 
friendships.  Such  was  Marie  Antoinette 
as  a  woman." 

In  the  political  events  which  suc- 
ceeded so  rapidly,  ending  in  the  over- 
throw of  the  monarchy,  the  queen,  in 
common  with  the  king,  was  charged 
with  duplicity  in  her  professions  of 
adherence  to  the  will  of  the  nation. 
Though  of  a  generous  kindly  nature, 
her  inclinations,  when  the  issue  came 
to  be  made,  were  naturally  with  the 
aristocratic  party.  It  would  be  expect- 
ing perhaps  too  much  of  any  sovereign 
at  that  day  to  yield  gracefully  to  such 
sweeping  reforms  as  were  then  insti- 
tuted in  France.  The  deeds  of  violence 
and  lawlessness  which  were  daily  com- 
mitted by  the  people,  might  well  seem 
to  justify  the  conviction  that  the  only 
safety  for  the  state  was  in  power  and 
repression,  and  that  this  force  belonged 
of  right  to  the  ancient  monarchy.  The 
misfortune  of  the  king  was  the  emi- 
gration of  members  of  the  court  and 
the  formation  of  a  hostile  party  outside 
of  the  country,  to  whose  assistance  he 
was  looking  for  redress.  "  In  forming 
a  judgment  on  the  terrible  events  of 
the  French  Revolution,"  says  a  recent 
writer,  "it  must  never  be  forgotten 
that  this  disposition  of  the  court  to 
rely  on  'foreign  aid  and  to  subdue  the 
revolution  by  foreign  influence,  was 
the  inexpiable  crime  of  the  king  and 
queen.  It  was  ridiculous  to  talk  of 
Louis  as  a  tyrant.  It  was  an  outrage 
to  ascribe  to  the  queen,  as  a  woman, 
any  single  action  which  would  not 


have  become  the  noblest  of  her  sex. 
Whatever  may  have  been  the  short- 
comings of  her  Austrian  education  and 
the  frivolity  of  her  early  habits,  mis- 
fortune and  danger  awakened  in  her  a 
force  of  will,  a  clearness  of  intelligence, 
a  power  of  language,  and  a  strength  of 
soul,  which  speak  with  imperishable 
eloquence  in  every  line  of  the  letters 
written  by  her  after  the  commence- 
ment of  the  revolution.  But,  although 
these  qualities  of  the  queen  do  her  the 
highest  honor,  and  in  this  respect  the 
publication  of  her  most  private  corres- 
pondence can  only  exalt  her  reputation, 
yet  these  papers  render  still  more  appa- 
rent the  fact  that  she  had  but  little  po 
litical  judgment,  and  that  neither  she 
nor  the  king  ever  conceived  the  possi- 
bility of  dealing  honestly  with  the  rev- 
olution. At  each  successive  stage  in  that 
protracted  tragedy,  there  was  a  secret 
policy  always  at  work  in  the  opposite 
sense,  and  that  policy,  relying  mainly 
on  external  support  was  their  destruc- 
tion."* 

It  was  more,  however,  by  sufferance 
than  action  that  the  queen  was  to  be 
distinguished  in  those  days  of  trial. 
Events  moved  rapidly.  There  was 
hardly  more  than  a  single  step  from 
the  freedom  of  the  court  to  the  re- 
straint of  the  prison,  and  the  part 
borne  by  Marie  Antoinette,  at  any 
time,  could  scarcely  be  anything  more 
than  that  of  a  simple  adviser  of  the 
king,  in  a  feeble,  capricious  sort  of 
way.  She  had  no  senate  to  influence, 
no  army  to  command,  no  royal  -will  to 
execute.  The  policy  of  the  nation  was 
shaped  by  its  necessities.  Bankruptcy 

*  Art.  Correspondence  of  Marie  Antoinette, 
Edinburgh  Review,  April,  1866. 


104 


MARIE  ANTOINETTE. 


and  starvation  were  the  imperial  ru- 
lers, and  were  inexorable  in  their  de- 
mands for  reform.  All  that  could  be 
done  to  palliate  or  defer  had  been 
done  in  previous  reigns.  The  waters 
had  been  dammed  up  beyond  the  power 
of  human  engineery  to  control  them  fur- 
ther, and  the  deluge  was  inevitable. 
JTie  only  escape  for  royalty  was  timely 
abdication,  if  the  reformers  had  been 
willing  to  spare  it  as  an  agent  of  their 
work.  The  king  was  made  both  an 
instrument  and  a  sacrifice.  His  forced 
acquiescence  in  the  constitution,  which 
he  had  no  real  intention  to  respect, 
gave  a  sanction  to  the  revolutionary 
proceedings,  and  henceforth,  after  a 
few  shiftless  efforts  at  intrigue,  and 
one  weak  attempt  to  escape,  there  was 
nothing  left  but  submission. 

The  story  of  the  last  years  of  the 
royal  family  in  this  constantly  dark- 
ening revolutionary  period  is  one  of 
the  saddest  narratives  in  all  history. 
In  their  powerless,  helpless  condition, 
the  insincerity  forced  upon  them  by 
their  position,  might  surely  have  been 
forgiven.  To  bring  them  to  death  was 
an  unnecessary  crime;  to  accompany 
that  death  with  the  brutalities  which 
attended  it,  was  the  act  of  fiends.  The 
first  scene  in  this  great  drama  in  which 
Marie  Antoinette  prominently  figures, 
is  in  its  first  act  in  that  incursion  of 
the  mob  at  Versailles,  in  the  night  of 
the  5th  of  October,  1789,  when  driven 
from  her  bed-chamber,  she  appeared  in 
early  morning  in  a  balcony  of  the  pa- 
lace with  her  children,  confronting  the 
infuriated  crowd  in  the  court-yard  be- 
low. When  they  ordered  the  children 
away,  as  if  to  shut  out  from  their  view 
that  appeal  to  tenderness  and  pity,  the 


queen  appeared  alone  before  them,  her 
hands  and  eyes  raised  to  heaven,  appa- 
rently expecting  instant  death — an  act 
of  heroism  which  must  have  tamed  for 
the  moment  the  ferocity  of  her  perse- 
cutors, whose  wanton,  libellous  detrac- 
tion, assailing  her  fair  fame,  was  even 
more  cruel  than  their  personal  vio- 
lence. The  ignominious  escort  to  Paris 
follows  upon  this,  and  the  prolonged 
virtual  imprisonment  in  the  palace  of 
the  Tuilleries,  the  king,  shorn  of  his 
prerogatives,  a  puppet  in  the  hands 
of  the  Assembly.  Wearied  at  length 
of  this  anomalous  position,  in  concert 
with  the  emigrant  nobles,  encouraged 
by  the  decision  of  the  queen,  in  June, 
1791,  he  endeavors  to  make  his  es- 
cape from  the  kingdom.  The  queen 
had  been  for  some  time  busy  in  pre- 
paration for  the  departure.  Madame 
Campan,  who  was  still  with  her,  was 
employed  in  getting  together  and  for- 
warding to  Brussels  a  complete  ward- 
robe for  the  family.  On  the  20th,  the 
king,  with  the  queen,  their  children 
and  his  sister  Elizabeth,  leave  the  Tuil- 
leries clandestinely  in  flight  for  the 
frontier.  The  journey  has  been  gene- 
rally well  arranged,  but  failing  in 
some  of  its  details,  chiefly  through  a 
slight  loss  of  time  on  the  route,  the 
actual  cause  of  disaster  it  is  said  being 
the  king's  persistence  in  stopping  to 
gratify  his  appetite  by  eating  a  meal 
at  a  friend's  house,  is  fatally  checked, 
late  in  the  evening  of  the  21st  at  Va- 
rennes.  The  king,  showing  himself 
from  a  window,  has  been  recognized, 
and  a  band  of  young  patriots  effect  his 
capture.  The  party  is  brought  back  in 
triumph  to  the  Tuilleries  and  guarded 
there  more  rigorously  than  before. 


MARIE  ANTOINETTE. 


105 


Though  untried,  they  are  already  vir- 
tually condemned,  and  their  lives,  in 
the  rapid  deterioration  of  political  par- 
ties, are  at  the  mercy  of  a  mob.  In 
vain  has  the  king  sworn  to  obey  the 
Constitution,  completed  at  last  by  the 
National  Assembly.  The  Legislative 
Assembly,  their  successors,  are  more 
intolerant,  and  a  mob,  in  the  interest 
of  the  Republicans,  on  the  20th  June, 
1792,  finds  its  way  into  the  inner  court 
of  the  Tuilleries,  demanding  conces- 
sions of  the  king,  crowning  his  majesty 
with  the  red  revolutionary  cap,  while 
the  queen  with  difficulty  escapes  wear- 
ing just  such  another,  getting  off  by 
placing  a  tri-colored  cockade  in  her 
head-dress.  This  is  but  child's  play, 
however,  to  the  events  at  the  Tuille- 
ries of  the  10th  of  August,  one  of  the 
dark  days  of  history,  when  the  insur- 
rectionary factions,  commencing  the 
reign  of  terror,  drove  the  royal  family 
as  their  only  escape  from  immediate 
massacre  to  take  refuge  in  the  National 
Assembly,  while  the  faithful  Swiss 
o-uard  laid  down  their  lives  in  defence 

o 

of  the  palace.  The  queen  would  have 
remained  to  risk  their  fate  and  there 
met  death  in  defence  of  the  crown; 
but  she  was  moved  by  an  appeal  for 
her  children  and  submitted.  The  As- 
sembly decreed  that  the  royal  family 
should  be  lodged  in  the  Temple,  an 
ancient  fortress  or  castle  in  the  heart 
of  the  city.  Here  for  a  time,  under 
strict  confinement,  making  the  best  of 


their  situation,  the  royal  party,  though 
suffering  greatly,  solaced  their  misfor- 
tunes by  mutual  acts  of  affection  and 
kindness,  till  the  king  was  separated 
from  them.  In  December,  he  was  car- 
ried forth  to  his  trial  by  the  Conven- 
tion which  had  succeeded  to  the  As- 
sembly, and  on  the  21st  suffered  death 
at  the  hands  of  the  public  executioner, 
having  previously  been  permitted  the 
grace,  or  rather  the  final  torture,  of  a 
parting  interview  with  his  family 
Four  months  after  the  death  of  the 
king,  the  dauphin  was  separated  from 
his  mother  in  the  Temple,  and  the 
queen  was  left  with  the  king's  sister, 
Madame  Elizabeth,  to  endure  the  aggra- 
vated sorrows  and  humiliations  heap- 
ed upon  her.  In  August,  1793,  she  was 
removed  to  the  still  more  cruel  prison 
of  the  Conciergerie,  in  the  vaults  of  the 
Palace  of  Justice,  and  in  October  was 
led  to  the  court  above  to  undergo  the 
mockery  of  a  trial  aggravated  by  the 
fiercest  and  most  revolting  indigni- 
ties. She  endured  all  with  a  heroism 
worthy  the  daughter  of  Maria  Theresa. 
The  only  charity  she  experienced,  was 
in  her  speedy  execution  on  the  16th, 
when  she  was  conducted  amidst  the 
jeers  of  the  populace  to  the  spot,  the 
Place  Louis  Quinze,  where,  nine  months 
before,  the  king  had  met  his  fate,  and 
there,  her  last  glance  toward  the  Tem- 
ple, and  her  last  thoughts  on  her  chil- 
dren, she  too  suffered  death  by  the 
guillotine. 


U 


DAVID     GARRICK. 


DAVID  GARRICK  was  born  at 
the  Angel  Inn,  Hereford,  on  the 
19th  February,  1716.*  He  was  French 
by  descent.  His  paternal  grandfather, 
David  Garric,  or  Garrique,  a  French 
Protestant  of  good  family,  had  escaped 
to  England  after  the  revocation  of  the 
Edict  of  Nantes,  reaching  London  on 
the  5th  of  October,  1685.  There  he  was 
joined  in  the  following  December  by 
his  wife,  who  had  taken  a  month  to 
make  the  passage  from  Bordeaux  in  a 
wretched  bark  of  fourteen  tons,  "  with 
strong  tempests,  and  at  great  peril  of 
being  lost."  Such  was  the  inveteracy 
of  their  persecutors,  that,  in  effecting 
their  own  escape,  these  poor  people 
had  to  leave  behind  them  their  only 
child,  a  boy  called  Peter,  who  was  out 
at  nurse  at  Bastide,  near  Bordeaux.  It 
was  not  until  May,  1687,  that  little 
Peter  was  restored  to  them  by  his 
nurse,  Mary  Mougnier,  who  came  over 
to  London  with  him.  By  this  time  a 
daughter  had  been  born,  and  other 
sons  and  daughters  followed ;  but  of 
a  numerous  family  three  alone  surviv- 
ed— Peter,  Jane,  and  David.  David 

*  This  narrative  is  abridged  from  an  admira- 
ble presentation  of  the  career  of  Garrick  in  the 
Quarterly  Review. 
(106) 


settled  at  Lisbon  as  a  wine  meicLant, 
and  Peter  entered  the  army  in  1706. 
His  regiment  was  quartered  at  Lien- 
field ;  and,  some  eighteen  months  after 
he  received  his  commission,  he  married 
Arabella,  the  daughter  of  the  Rev.  Mr. 
Clough,  vicar  choral  of  the  cathedral 
there.  There  was  no  fortune  on  either 
side,  but  much  affection.  The  usual 
result  followed.  Ten  children  were 
born  in  rapid  succession,  of  whom  sev- 
en survived.  Of  these  the  third  was 
David,  who  made  his  appearance  some- 
what inopportunely,  while  his  father, 
then  a  lieutenant  of  dragoons,  was  at 
Hereford  on  recruiting  service. 

Lichneld  was  the  home  of  the  fami- 
ly. There  was  good  blood  on  both 
sides  of  it,  and  they  were  admitted  in- 
to the  best  society  of  the  place,  and 
held  in  deserved  respect.  David  was 
a  clever,  bright  boy ;  of  quick  observa- 
tion, apt  at  mimicry,  and  of  an  enga 
ging  temper.  Such  learning  as  the 
grammar  -  school  of  the  town  could 
give  he  obtained;  and  his  training 
here,  and  at  Edial  some  years  after- 
wards under  his  townsman  Samuel 
Johnson,  produced  more  of  the  fruits 
of  a  liberal  education  than  commonly 
results  even  from  schooling  of  a  more 


DAYID  GARRICK:. 


107 


elaborate  and  costly  kind.  The  occa- 
sional visits  of  a  strolling  troop  of  play- 
ers gave  the  future  Roscius  his  first 
taste  of  the  fascinations  of  the  drama. 
To  see  was  to  resolve  to  emulate,  and 
before  he  was  eleven  years  old  he  dis- 
tinguished himself  in  the  part  of  Ser- 
jeant Kite  in  a  performance  of  Far- 
quhar's  "Recruiting  Officer,"  organiz- 
ed for  the  amusement  of  their  friends 
by  his  companions  and  himself. 

Meanwhile  the  cares  of  a  numerous 
family  were  growing  upon  his  parents. 
To  meet  its  expenses,  his  father  ex- 
changed from  the  dragoons,  into  a 
marching  regiment,  and  went  upon 
half-pay.  Peter,  the  eldest  boy,  had 
gone  into  the  Navy ;  and  upon  the  in- 
vitation of  the  uncle,  whose  name  he 
bore,  young  David,  then  only  eleven, 
was  sent  to  Lisbon,  apparently  with 
the  expectation  that  a  provision  for 
life  would  be  made  for  him  in  his  un- 
cle's business.  But  either  his  uncle  had 
no  such  intention,  or  the  boy  found  the 
occupation  distasteful,  for  his  stay  in 
Portugal  did  not  extend  over  many 
months.  Short  as  it  was,  he  succeeded 
in  making  himself  popular  there  by  his 
vivacity  and  talents.  After  dinner  he 
would  be  set  upon  the  table  to  recite  to 
the  guests  passages  from  the  plays  they 
were  familiar  with  at  home.  A  very 
pleasant  inmate  he  must  have  been  in 
the  house  of  his  well-to-do  bachelor 
uncle.  No  doubt  he  was  sent  home 
with  something  handsome  in  his  pock- 
et ;  and  when  a  few  years  afterwards 
the  uncle  came  back  to  England  to 
die,  he  left  his  nephew  1000/., — twice 
as  much  as  he  g'ave  to  any  others  of 
the  family. 

Garrick's  father,  who  had  for  some 


years  been  making  an  ineffectual  strug 
gle  to  keep  his  head  above  water  upon 
his  half-pay,  found  he  could  do  so  no 
longer,  and  in  1731  he  joined  his  regi 
ment,  which  had  been  sent  out  to  gar- 
rison Gibraltar,  leaving  behind  him 
his  wife,  broken  in  health,  to  face  sin 
gle-handed  the  debts  and  duns,  the 
worries  and  anxieties,  of  a  large  fami- 
ly. In  her  son  David  she  found  the 
best  support.  His  heart  and  head 
were  ever  at  work  to  soften  her  trials, 
and  his  gay  spirit  doubtless  brighten- 
ed with  many  a  smile  the  sad  wistful- 
ness  of  her  anxious  face.  The  fare  in 
her  home  was  meagre,  and  the  dresses 
of  its  inmates  scanty  and  well  worn ; 
still  there  were  loving  hearts  in  it, 
which  were  drawn  closer  together  by 
their  very  privations.  But  the  poor 
lady's  heart  was  away  with  the  father. 

"  I  must  tell  my  dear  life  and  soul," 
she  writes  to  him  in  a  letter,  which 
reads  like  a  bit  of  Thackeray  or  Sterne, 
"  that  I  am  not  able  to  live  any  longer 
without  him ;  for  I  grow  very  jealous. 
But  in  the  midst  of  all  this  I  do  not 
blame  my  dear.  I  have  very  sad  dreams 
for  you but  I  have  the  pleas- 
ure when  I  am  up,  to  think,  were  I  with 
you,  how  tender.  ....  my  dear  would 
be  to  me ;  nay  was,  when  I  was  with 
you  last.  O !  that  I  had  you  in  my 
arms.  I  would  tell  my  dear  life  how 
much  I  am  his — A.  G." 

Her  husband  had  then  been  only 
two  years  gone.  Three  more  weary 
years  were  to  pass  before  she  was  to 
see  him  again.  This  was  in  1736,  and 
he  returned,  shattered  in  health  and 
spirits,  to  die  within  little  more  than 
a  year.  One  year  more,  and  she,  too, 
the  sad  faithful  mother,  whose  "  dear 


108 


DAYID   GAREICK. 


Life  "  was  restored  to  her  arras  only  to 
be  taken  from  them  by  a  sterner  part- 
ing, was  herself  at  rest. 

During  his  father's  absence  Garrick 
had  not  been  idle.  His  busy  brain 
and  restless  fancy  had  been  laying  up 
stores  of  observation  for  future  use. 
He  was  a  general  favorite  in  the  Lich- 
field  circle — amusing  the  old,  and  head- 
ing the  sports  of  the  young — winning 
the  hearts  of  all.  Gilbert  Walmsley, 
Registrar  of  the  Ecclesiastical  Court,  a 
good  and  wise  friend,  who  had  known 
and  loved  him  from  childhood,  took 
him  under  his  special  care.  On  his 
suggestion,  possibly  by  his  help,  Dav- 
id and  his  brother  George  were  sent  as 
pupils  to  Johnson's  academy  at  Edial, 
to  complete  their  studies  in  Latin  and 
French.  Garrick  and  Johnson  had 
been  friends  before,  and  there  was  in- 
deed but  seven  years'  difference  in  their 
ages.  But  Johnson  even  then  impress- 
ed his  pupil  with  a  sense  of  superiority, 
which  never  afterwards  left  him ;  while 
Garrick  established  an  equally  lasting 
hold  upon  the  somewhat  capricious 
heart  of  his  ungainly  master.  From 
time  to  time  he  was  taken  by  friends 
to  London,  where,  in  the  theatres  that 
were  to  be  the  scenes  of  his  future 
triumphs,  he  had  opportunities  of 
studying  some  of  the  leading  perform- 
ers, whom  he  was  afterwards  to  eclipse. 
Even  in  these  early  days  the  dream  of 
coping  with  these  favorites  of  the  town 
had  taken  possession  of  him.  But  he 
kept  it  to  himself,  well  knowing  the 
shock  he  would  have  inflicted  on  the 
kind  hearts  at  home,  had  he  suggested 

oo 

to  1hem  the  possibility  of  such  a  career 
for  himself. 

By  the  time  his  father  returned  from 


Gibraltar  Garrick  was  nineteen.  A  pro- 
fession must  be  chosen,  and  the  law  ap- 
pears to  have  been  thought  the  fittest 
for  a  youth  of  so  much  readiness  and 
address,  and  with  an  obviously  unusu- 
al faculty  of  speech.  Some  fuHhei 
preliminary  studies  were,  howevei,  in- 
dispensable. He  could  not  afford  to  go 
to  either  university,  and  in  this  strait 
his  friend  Valmsley  bethought  him  of 
a  "  dear  old  friend  "  at  Rochester,  the 
Rev.  Mr.  Colson,  afterward  Lucasian 
Professor  at  Cambridge,  a  man  ol  em- 
inence in  science,  as  a  person  most  like- 
ly to  give  young  Garrick  the  instruc- 
tion in  "  mathematics,  philosophy,  and 
humane  learning  "  which  was  deemed 
requisite  to  complete  his  education. 
To  him,  therefore,  a  letter  was  de- 
spatched, asking  him  to  undertake  the 
charge,  from  which  we  get  an  authen- 
tic and  agreeable  picture  of  the  young 
fellow's  character. 

"  He  is  a  very  sensible  fellow,  and  a 
good  scholar,  nineteen,  of  sober  and 
good  dispositions,  and  is  as  ingenious 
and  promising  a  young  man  as  ever  I 
knew  in  my  life.  Few  instructions  on 
your  side  will  do,  and  in  the  intervals 
of  study  he  will  be  an  agreeable  com- 
panion for  you.  This  young  gentleman 
has  been  much  with  me,  ever  since  he 
was  a  child,  and  I  have  taken  much 
pleasure  in  instructing  him,  and  have 
a  great  affection  and  esteem  for  him." 
Mr.  Colson  accepted  the  proposal ;  but 
by  the  time  the  terms  had  been  arrang 
ed,  another  young  native  of  Lichileld, 
in  whom  Walmsley  felt  no  slight  inter- 
est, had  determined  to  move  southward 
to  try  his  fortunes,  and  was  also  to  be 
brought  under  Mr.  Colson's  notice. 
This  was  Samuel  Johnson,  whose 


DAYID   GAREICK. 


109 


Edial  Academy  had  by  tliis  time  been 
starved  out,  but  for  whom.  London,  the 
last  hope  of  ambitious  scholars,  was 
still  open.  He  had  written  his  trage- 
dy of  "Irene,"  and  it  had  found  pro- 
vincial admirers,  Walmsley  among  the 
number,  who  thought  a  tragedy  in 
verse  the  open  sesame  to  fame  and  for- 
tune. For  London,  therefore,  Johnson 
and  Garrick  started  together — John- 
son, as  he  used  afterwards  to  say,  with 
two-pence-half-penny  in  his  pocket, 
and  Garrick  with  three  halfpence  in 
his  ;  a  mocking  exaggeration,  not  very 
wide,  however,  of  the  truth. 

For  some  reason  not  now  known 
Garrick  did  not  go  to  Mr.  Colson  in  a 
week.  On  reaching  town  he  lost  no 
time  in  getting  himself  admitted  to 
the  Honorable  Society  of  Lincoln's  Inn 
(19th  March,  1737)  by  payment  of  the 
admission  fee,  the  only  act  of  member- 
ship which  he  appears  ever  to  have 
performed.  He  stayed  in  London  with 
Johnson  for  some  time,  and  their  fi- 
nances fell  so  low  that  they  had  to  bor- 
row five  pounds  on  their  joint  note 
from  one  Wilcox,  a  bookseller  and 
acquaintance  of  Garrick' s,  who  after- 
wards proved  one  of  Johnson's  best 
friends.  Most  probably  Garrick's 
plans  of  study  under  Mr.  Colson  were 
disconcerted  by  the  illness  of  his  father, 
who  died  within  a  month  after  Garrick 
*iad  started  from  Lichfield.  Nor  was  it 
nntil  the  death  soon  afterwards  of  the 
Lisbon  uncle,  and  the  opening  to  Gar- 
rick of  his  £1000  legacy,  that  he  found 
himself  in  a  condition  to  incur  that  ex- 
pense. Late  in  1737  he  went  to  Koches- 
ter,  and  remained  with  Mr.  Colson  for 
some  months,  but  with  what  advantage 
can  be  only  matter  of  conjecture. 


Early  in  1738  Garrick  returned  to 
Lichfield.  By  this  time  his  brother 
Peter  had  left  the  navy,  and  returned 
home.  There  were  five  brothers  and 
sisters  to  be  provided  for,  so  Peter  and 
he  clubbed  their  little  fortunes,  and 
set  up  in  business  as  wine  merchants 
in  Lichfield  and  London.  David,  by 
this  time  tolerably  familiar  with  the 
ways  of  town,  and  not  unknown  at  the 
coffee-houses  where  his  wines  might  be 
in  demand,  took  charge  of  the  London 
business.  Vaults  were  taken  in  Dur- 
ham Yard,  between  the  Strand  and  the 
river,  where  the  Adelphi  Terrace  now 
stands,  and  here  Foote,  in  his  usual 
vein  of  grotesque  exaggeration,  used 
to  say,  he  had  known  the  great  actor 
"  with  three  quarts  of  vinegar  in  the 
cellar,  calling  himself  a  wine  mer- 
chant." 

Of  Garrick  at  this  period  we  get  a 
vivid  glimpse  from  Macklin,  an  estab- 
lished actor,  who  was  then  Garrick's 
inseparable  friend,  but  was  afterwards 
to  prove  a  constant  thorn  in  his  side 
through  life,  and  his  most  malignant 
detractor  after  death.  Garrick  "was 
then,"  as  Macklin  told  his  own  bio- 
grapher Cooke,  "  a  very  sprightly 
young  man,  neatly  ma'de,  of  an  express- 
ive countenance,  and  most  agreeable 
manners."  Mr.  Cooke  adds,  upon  the 
same  authority : — "  The  stage  possessed 
him  wholly ;  he  could  talk  or  think  of 
nothing  but  the  theatre  ;  and  as  they 
often  dined  together  in  select  parties, 
Garrick  rendered  himself  the  idol  of 
the  meeting  by  his  mimicry,  anecdotes, 
etc.  With  other  funds  of  information, 
he  possessed  a  number  of  good  travel 
ling  stories  "  (with  which  his  youthful 
voyage  to  Lisbon  had  apparently  sup- 


110 


DAYID  GABRICK. 


plied  him),  "which  he  narrated,  sir  " 
(added  the  veteran),  "  in  such  a  vein 
of  pleasantry  and  rich  humor,  as  I 
have  seldom  seen  equalled." 

There  could  be  only  one  conclusion 
to  such  a  state  of  things.  The  wine 
business  languished;  that  it  was  not 
wholly  ruined,  and  Garrick  with  it, 
shows  that  with  all  his  love  of  society 
he  was  able  to  exercise  great  prudence 
and  self-restraint.  "  Though  on  plea- 
sure bent,  he  had  a  frugal  mind." 
Early  habits  of  self-denial,  and  the 
thoughts  of  the  young  brothers  and 
sisters  at  Lichfield,  were  enough  to 
check  everything  like  extravagance, 
though  they  could  not  control  the  pas- 
sion which  was  hourly  feeding  itself 
upon  the  study  of  plays  and  inter- 
course with  players,  and  bearing  him 
onwards  to  the  inevitable  goal.  Their 
society,  and  that  of  the  wits  and  critics 
about  town,  were  the  natural  element 
for  talents  such  as  his.  He  could  even 
then  turn  an  epigram  or  copy  of  verses, 
for  which  his  friend  Johnson  would 
secure  a  place  in  the  "  Gentleman's 
Magazine."  Paragraphs  of  dramatic 
criticism  frequently  exercised  his  pen. 
He  had  a  farce,  "  Lethe,"  accepted  at 
Drury  Lane,  and  another,  "  The  Lying 
Valet,"  ready  for  the  stage.  Actors 
and  managers  were  among  his  inti- 
mates. He  had  the  entree  behind  the 
scenes  at  the  two  great  houses,  Drury 
Lane  and  Covent  Garden,  and  his  his- 
trionic powers  were  so  well  recognized, 
that  one  evening,  in  1740,  when  Wood- 
ward was  too  ill  to  go  on  as  harlequin, 
at  the  little  theatre  in  Goodman's 
Fields,  Garrick  was  allowed  to  take 
his  place  for  the  early  scenes,  and  got 
Jirough  them  so  well  that  the  sub- 


stitution was  not  surmised  by  the 
audience. 

Nor  had  his  been  a  mere  lounger's 
delight  in  the  pleasures  of  the  theatre. 
The  axiom  that  the  stage  is  nought, 
which  does  not  "  hold  the  mirror  up  to 
nature,"  had  taken  deep  hold  upon  his 
mind.  But  from  the  actual  stage  he 
found  that  nature,  especially  in  the 
poetical  drama,  had  all  but  vanished, 
and  in  its  place  had  come  a  purely 
conventional  and  monotonous  style  of 
declamation,  with  a  stereotyped  system 
of  action  no  less  formal  and  unreal. 
There  was  a  noble  opening  for  any  one 
who  should  have  the  courage  and  the 
gifts  to  return  to  nature  and  to  truth, 
and  Garrick  felt  that  it  was  "  in  him  " 
to  effect  the  desired  revolution.  Nor 
was  that  reform  far  distant.  The  very 
next  summer  was  to  decide  Garrick' s 
career.  His  broodings  were  now  to 
take  actual  shape.  But  before  hazard- 
ing an  appearance  in  London  he  wisely 
resolved  to  test  his  powers  in  the  coun- 
try ;  and  with  this  view  he  went  down 
to  Ipswich  with  the  company  of  Gif- 
fard,  the  manager  of  the  Goodman's 
Fields  Theatre,  and  made  his  appear- 
ance under  the  name  of  Lyddal  as 
Aboan  in  Southern's  tragedy  of 
"  Oroonoko."  This  he  followed  up  by 
several  other  characters,  both  tragic 
and  comic,  none  of  them  of  first  im- 
portance, but  sufficient  to  give  him 
ease  on  the  stage,  and  at  the  same  time 
enable  him  to  ascertain  wherein  his 
strength  lay.  His  success  was  unques- 
tionable, and  decided  him  on  appealing 
to  a  London  audience. 

The  quality  in  which  Garrick  then 
and  throughout  his  career  surpassed 
all  his  contemporaries  was  the  power 


DAVID   GAERICK. 


Ill 


of  kindling  with  the  exigencies  of  the 
scene.  He  lost  himself  in  his  part.  It 
spoke  through  him ;  and  the  greater 
the  play  it  demanded  of  emotion  and 
passion,  the  more  diversified  the  ex- 
pression and  action  for  which  it  gave 
scope,  the  more  brilliantly  did  his 
genius  assert  itself.  His  face  answer- 
ed to  his  feelings,  and  its  workings 
gave  warning  of  his  words  before  he 
uttered  them  ;  his  voice,  melodious  and 
full  of  tone,  though  far  from  strong, 
had  the  penetrating  quality  hard  to 
define,  but  which  is  never  wanting 
either  in  the  great  orator  or  the  great 
actor ;  and  his  figure,  light,  graceful, 
and  well  balanced,  though  under  the 
average  size,  was  equal  to  every  de- 
mand which  his  impulsive  nature  made 
upon  it.  We  can  see  all  this  in  the 
portraits  of  him  even  at  this  early 
period.  Only  in  those  of  a  later  date 
do  we  get  some  idea  of  the  command- 
ing power  of  his  eyes,  which  not  only 
held  his  audience  like  a  spell,  but  con- 
trolled, with  a  power  almost  beyond 
endurance,  his  fellow  performers  in 
the  scene.  But  from  the  first  the 
power  must  have  been  there.  He  had 
noted  well  all  that  was  good  in  the 
professors  of  the  art  he  was  destined 
to  revolutionize ;  and  he  had  learned, 
as  men  of  ability  do  learn,  even  from 
their  very  defects,  in  what  direction 
true  excellence  was  to  be  sought  for. 
Long  afterwards  he  used  to  say  that 
his  own  chief  successes  in  "  Richard  the 
Third  "  were  due  to  what  he  had  learn- 
ed through  watching  Ryan,  a  very  in- 
different actor,  in  the  same  part. 
Richard  was  the  character  he  chose  for 
his  first  London  trial ;  a  choice  made 
with  a  wise  estimate  of  his  own  pow- 


ers, for  the  display  of  which  it  was 
eminently  fitted.  At  this  time  the 
part  was  in  the  possession  of  Quin, 
whose  "manner  of  heaving  up  his 
words,  and  labored  action,"  as  de- 
scribed by  Davies,  were  the  best  of 
foils  to  the  fiery  energy  and  subtle 
varieties  of  expression  with  which  Gar 
rick  was  soon  to  make  the  public 
familiar.  He  appeared,  by  the  usual 
venial  fiction  on  similar  occasions,  as  a 
"  gentleman  who  never  appeared  on 
any  stage."  The  house  was  not  a 
great  one ;  still  the  audience  was  nu- 
merous enough  to  make  the  actor  feel 
his  triumph,  and  to  spread  the  report 
of  it  widely.  They  were  taken  by  sur- 
prise at  first  by  a  style  at  once  so  new 
and  so  consonant  to  nature. 

"To  the  just  modulation  of  the 
words,"  says  Davies,  "  and  concurring 
expression  of  the  features,  from  the 
genuine  workings  of  nature,  they  had 
been  strangers,  at  least  for  some  time. 
But,  after  Mr.  Garrick  had  gone 
through  a  variety  of  scenes,  in  which 
he  gave  evident  proof  of  consummate 
art,  and  perfect  knowledge  of  charac- 
ter, their  doubts  were  turned  into  sur- 
prise and  astonishment,  from  which 
they  relieved  themselves  in  loud  and 
reiterated  applause." 

A  power  like  this  was  sure  of  rapid 
recognition  in  those  days,  when  theatres 
formed  a  sort  of  fourth  estate.  Gar- 
rick's  first  appearance  was  on  the  19th 
of  October,  1^41.  He  repeated  the 
character  the  two  following  nights, 
then  changed  it  for  "  Aboan,"  his  first 
part  of  the  Ipswich  Series.  The  audi- 
ences were  still  moderate,  and  his  sal- 
ary, a  guinea  a  night,  moderate  in 
proportion.  Bui  fame  had  carried  the 


112 


DAVID   GARPJCK. 


report  of  the  new  wonder  from  the 
obscure  corner  of  the  city,  near  the 
Minories,  in  which  his  friend  Giffard's 
theatre  was  situated,  to  the  wits  and 
fashionable  people  in  the  West-end. 
Richard  was  restored  to  the  bills. 
"  Goodman's  Fields,"  says  Davies, 
"  was  full  of  the  splendors  of  St. 
James's  and  Grosvenor  Square;  the 
coaches  of  the  nobility  filled  up  the 
space  from  Temple  Bar  to  White 
Chapel."  What  Garrick  valued  more 
than  all  this  concourse  of  fashionables, 
men  of  high  character  and  undoubted 
taste  nocked  to  hear  him  ;  and  on  the 
2nd  of  November,  Pope,  ill  and  failing, 
who  had  come  out  early  in  the  year  to 
see  Macklin's  "  Shylock,"  and  had  re- 
cognized its  excellence,  was  again 
tempted  from  his  easy  chair  at  Twick- 
enham by  the  rumor  of  a  worthy  suc- 
cessor having  arisen  to  the  Betterton 
and  Booth  of  his  early  admiration.  "  I 
saw,"  said  Garrick,  describing  the  event 
long  afterwards  to  the  somewhat  mag- 
niloquent Percival  Stockdale,  "  our  lit- 
tle poetical  hero,  dressed  in  black, 
seated  in  a  side-box  near  the  stage,  and 
viewing  me  with  a  serious  and  earnest 
attention.  His  look  shot  and  thrilled 
like  lightning  through  my  frame,  and 
I  had  some  hesitation  in  proceeding 
from  anxiety  and  from  joy.  As  Rich- 
ard gradually  blazed  forth,  the  house 
was  in  a  roar  of  applause,  and  the  con- 
spiring hand  of  Pope  showered  me 
with  laurels."  Pope  returned  to  see 
him  twice;  and  his  verdict,  which 
reached  Garrick  through  Lord  Orrery, 
shows  how  deeply  he  was  impressed 
by  Garrick's  fresh  and  forcible  style, 
and  the  genuine  inspiration  which 
animated  his  performance.  "That 


young  man  never  had  his  equal  as  an 
actor,  and  he  will  never  have  a  rival.'" 
Pope  dreaded  that  success  would  spoil 
him  ;  but  Garrick's  genius  was  not  of 
the  ungenuine  kind,  which  is  spoiled 
by  success.  He  knew  only  too  well 
how  far  his  best  achievements  fell 
short  of  what  his  imagination  con- 
ceived. Others  might  think  his  de> 
lineations  could  not  be  improved.  Not 
so  he;  for  act  as  long  as  he  might, 
there  was  no  great  part,  in  Shakespeare 
especially,  which  would  not  constantly 
present  new  details  to  elaborate,  or 
suggest  shades  of  significance  or  con- 
trast which  had  previously  escaped 
him.  The  praise  of  old  Mrs.  Porter, 
herself  the  greatest  tragedian  of  her 
time,  who  had  come  up  to  town  to  see 
him  from  her  retirement  in  the  country, 
must  have  spoken  more  eloquently  to 
him  than  even  Pope's  broad  eulogiuTn, 
and  in  it,  too,  there  was  the  prophecy 
of  the  "  All  hail,  hereafter."  "  He  is 
born  an  actor,  and  does  more  at  his 
first  appearance  than  ever  anybody  did 
with  twenty  years'  practice  ;  and,  good 
God,  what  will  he  be  in  time !  "  The 
Duke  of  Argyle  and  Lord  Cobham, 
great  authorities  in  stage  matters,  pro- 
nounced him  superior  to  Betterton. 
The  very  conflicts  of  opinion  to  which 
such  high  commendations  gave  rise 
were  the  best  of  fame  for  the  young  ar 
tist.  They  drew  crowds  to  the  theatre ; 
and  even  before  the  end  of  1741,  it  was 
often  far  too  small  to  accommodate  the 
numbers  that  flocked  for  admittance. 
The  humble  salary  of  a  guinea  a  night 
was  clearly  no  adequate  return  for  such 
merits.  GifFard  offered  him  a  share  in 
the  management  upon  equal  terms; 
and  within  the  next  few  months  the 


DAVID   GAEETCK. 


H3 


foundation  of  the  actor's  ultimate  great 
fortune  was  laid. 

Such  success  could  not  fail  to  pro- 
voke the  jealousy  of  those  performers 
who  had  hitherto  occupied  the  fore- 
most ranks.  It  was  a  virtual  condem- 
nation of  all  they  had  trained  them- 
selves to  think  true  acting.  "  If  this 
young  fellow  is  right,  then  we  have  all 
been  wrong,"  said  one,  as  if  in  that 
statement  were  included  a  final  verdict 
against  him.  "This,"  remarked  the 
sententious  Quin,  "  is  the  wonder  of  a 
day ;  Garrick  is  a  new  religion ;  the 
people  follow  him  as  another  White- 
field  ;  but  they  will  soon  return  to 
church  again."  Return,  however,  they 
did  not.  A  new  era  had  begun ;  and 
Garrick,  whose  ready  pen  did  not  al- 
ways do  him  such  good  service,  was 
able  to  retort  the  sarcasm  in  a  smart 
epigram,  of  which  these  two  lines  have 
kept  their  place  in  literature : 

"  When  doctrines  meet  with  general  approba- 
tion, 
It  is  not  heresy  but  Reformation." 

While  people  were  still  in  admira- 
tion at  the  tragic  force  of  his  Richard, 
he  surprised  them  by  the  display  of 
comic  powers,  scarcely  less  remarkable, 
in  Clodio  in  the  "  Fop's  Fortune," 
Fondlewife  in  Congreve's  "  Old  Bache- 
lor," and  other  characters ;  thus  early 
demonstrating  his  own  doctrine  that 
"  there  must  be  comedy  in  the  perfect 
actor  of  tragedy,"  of  which  he  was  af- 
terwards to  furnish  so  brilliant  an 
example.  His  lively  farce  of  "  The 
Lying  Valet  "  (produced  in  December, 
1741),  established  his  reputation  as  a 
writer,  at  the  same  time  that  it  gave 
him  in  Sharp  a  field  for  the  airy  viva- 
city, the  ever-bubbling  gayety  of  tone, 
15 


the  talent  of  making  witty  things 
doubly  witty  by  the  way  of  saying 
them,  for  which  he  was  afterwards  so 
famous.  Some  of  his  friends  (his 
townsman  Newton,  the  future  Bishop, 
then  tutor  to  Lord  Carpenter's  son, 
among  the  number)  thought  his  ap- 
pearance in  such  parts  a  mistake. 
"  You,  who  are  equal  to  the  greatest 
parts,  strangely  demean  yourself  in 
acting  anything  that  is  low  or  little," 
he  wrote,  18th  January,  1742.  "There 
are  abundance  of  people  who  hit  ofl1 
low  humor  and  succeed  in  the  cox- 
comb and  the  buffoon  very  well ;  but 
there  is  scarce  one  in  an  age  who  is 
capable  of  acting  the  hero  in  tragedy 
and  the  fine  gentleman  in  comedy. 
Though  you  perform  these  parts  never 
so  well,  yet  there  is  not  half  the  merit 
in  excelling  in  them  as  in  the  others." 
Sound  enough  advice  in  the  main  and 
to  actors  of  limited  scope,  and  most 
politic  as  a  warning,  by  which  Garrick 
profited,  not  to  let  himself  down  by 
playing  merely  farce  parts.  But  there 
is  no  good  reason  why  an  actor  of  the 
requisite  genius  should  not  play  Touch- 
stone as  well  as  Othello,  Sir  Toby  Belch 
as  well  as  Coriolanus,  with  no  more 
loss  of  caste  than  Shakespeare  for  hav- 
ing written  them.  But  then  there  must 
be  the  requisite  genius  to  justify  the 
attempt.  This  Garrick  had,  as  was 
soon  afterwards  proved,  when  he  pass- 
ed from  King  Lear  to  Abel  Drugger, 
in  "The  Alchemist,"  from  Hamlet  to 
Bayes  in  "  The  Rehearsal,"  and  left  his 
severest  critics  in  doubt  in  which  he 
was  most  to  be  admired.  Indeed  it 
was  just  this  wide  range  of  power,  this 
Shakesperian  multiformity  of  concep- 
tion, which  was  the  secret  of  Garrick's 


DAVID   GAEKICK. 


greatness,  and,  after  his  death,  made 
even  the  cynical  Walpole  confess  that 
he  was  "  the  greatest  actor  that  ever 
lived,  both  in  comedy  and  tragedy." 
Newton  himself  was  struck  by  this  a 
few  months  later.  He  had  just  seen 
Garrick's  Lear,  and  after  giving  him 
the  opinion  of  certain  friends  that  he 
far  exceeded  Booth  in  that  character, 
and  even  equalled  Betterton,  he  goes 
on  to  say  : — 

"The  thing  that  strikes  me  above 
all  others  is  that  variety  in  your  act- 
ing, and  your  being  so  totally  a  differ- 
ent man  in  Lear  from  what  you  are  in 
Richard.  There  is  a  sameness  in  every 
other  actor.  Gibber  is  something  of  a 
coxcomb  in  everything :  and  Wolsey, 
Syphax,  and  lago,  all  smell  strong  of 
the  essence  of  Lord  Foppington.  Booth 
was  a  philosopher  in  Cato,  and  was  a 
philosopher  in  everything  else !  His 
passion  in  Hotspur  I  hear  was  much  of 
the  same  nature,  whereas  yours  was  an 
old  man's  passion,  and  an  old  man's 
voice  and  action  ;  and,  in  the  four  parts 
wherein  I  have  seen  you,  Richard,  Cha- 
mont,  Bayes,  and  Lear,  I  never  saw  four 
actors  more  different  from  one  another, 
than  you  are  from  yourself." 

His  Lear,  like  his  Richard,  seems 
from  the  first  to  have  been  superb. 
Cooke,  indeed,  in  his  "  Memoir  of  Mack- 
lin"  says  the  first  and  second  perfor- 
mances of  the  part  disappointed  that 
severe  critic.  It  did  not  sufficiently  in- 
dicate the  infirmities  of  the  man  "  four- 
score and  upwards  " — the  curse  did 
not  break  down,  as  it  should  have  done, 
in  the  impotence  of  rage — there  was  a 
lack  of  dignity  in  the  prison  scene,  and 
so  forth.  Garrick  took  notes  of  Mack- 
lin's  criticisms  on  all  these  points, 


withdrew  the  play  for  six  weeks,  and 
restudied  the  character  in  the  interval. 
Of  the  result  on  his  next  appearance 
Macklin  always  spoke  with  rapture. 
The  curse  in  particular  exceeded  all  he 
could  have  imagined;  it  seemed  to 
electrify  the  audience  with  horror. 
The  words  "  kill— kill— kill,"  echoed 
all  the  revenge  of  a  frantic  king, 
"  whilst  his  pathos  on  discovering  his 
daughter  Cordelia  drew  tears  of  com- 
miseration from  the  whole  house.  In 
short,  sir,  the  little  dog  made  it  a  chef 
d'ceuvre,  and  a  chef  dceuvre  it  contin- 
ued to  the  end  of  his  life." 

While  the  town  was  ringing  with 
his  triumphs,  and  his  brain  was  still 
on  fire  with  the  fulfilment  of  his  cher- 
ished dreams,  Garrick  did  not  forget 
his  sober  partner  in  business  nor  the 
other  good  folks  at  Lichfield,  to  whose 
genteel  notions  his  becoming  a  stage- 
player,  he  knew,  would  be  a  terrible 
shock.  The  Ipswich  performances  had 
escaped  their  notice;  and  brother 
Peter,  when  in  town  soon  afterwards, 
found  him  out  of  health  and  spirits. 
It  was  the  miserable  interim  "  between 
the  acting  of  a  dreadful  thing,  and  the 
first  motion"  of  it.  Garrick,  though 
he  had  quite  made  up  his  mind  to  go 
on  the  stage,  was  afraid  to  break  the 
news  to  his  family.  But  he  did  so  the 
day  after  his  debut  at  Goodman's  Fields 
while  the  plaudits  of  his  audience 
were  yet  sounding  in  his  ears,  in  a  let- 
ter to  his  brother  and  partner,  depre- 
cating his  censure  with  an  unassuming 
earnestness  which  speaks  volumes  for 
the  modesty  of  the  artist,  and  the 
simple  and  loving  nature  of  the  man : — • 

"My  mind,"  he  writes,  "(as  you 
must  know)  has  been  always  inclined 


L>AVID   GARRICK. 


to  tlie  stage,  nay,  so  strongly  so  that 
all  my  illness  and  lowness  of  spirits 
was  owing  to  my  want  of  resolution 
to  tell  you  my  thoughts  when  here. 
Finding  at  last  both  my  inclination 
and  interest  required  some  new  way 
of  life,  I  have  chose  the  most  agreeable 
to  myself,  and  though  I  know  you  will 
be  much  displeased  at  me,  yet  I  hope 
when  you  shall  find  that  I  may  have 
the  genius  of  an  actor,  without  the 
vices,  you  will  think  the  less  severely 
of  me,  and  not  be  ashamed  to  own  me 
for  a  brother.  .  .  Last  night  I 
played  Richard  the  Third  to  the  sur- 
prise of  everybody,  and  as  I  shall  make 
very  near  £300  per  annum  by  it,  and 
as  it  is  really  what  I  doat  upon,  I  am 
resolved  to  pursue  it." 

The  winjB  business  at  Durham  Yard, 
he  explained,  had  not  prospered — £400 
of  Garrick's  small  capital  had  been 
lost — and  he  saw  no  prospect  of  re- 
trieving it.  He  was  prepared  to  make 
every  reasonable  arrangement  with  his 
brother  about  their  partnership,  and 
his  new  career  better  fortune 


in 


awaited  him,  of  which  his  family 
should  share  the  fruits.  But  the  news 
spread  dismay  in  the  old  home  at  Lich- 
field;  their  respectability  was  com- 
promised by  one  of  their  blood  becom- 
ing a  "harletry  player,"  and  getting 
mixed  up  with  the  loose  morals  and 
shifty  ways  of  the  theatrical  fraternity. 
Before  Peter's  reply  reached  him,  Gar- 
rick  must  have  known  that  his  fame 
was  secure.  But  the  tone  of  his  re- 
joinder is  still  modest,  though  firm. 
Writing  again  on  the  27th,  he  assures 
his  brother  that  even  his  friends,  "  who 
were  at  first  surprised  at  my  intent,  by 
seeing  me  on  the  stage,  are  now  well 


convinced  it  was  impossible  to  keep 
me  off."  As  to  company,  "  the  best  in 
town  "  were  desirous  of  his,  and  he  had 
received  more  civilities  since  he  came 
on  the  stage  than  he  ever  did  in  all  his 
life  before.  Leonidas  Glover  has  been 
to  see  him  every  night,  and  goes  about 
saying  he  had  not  seen  acting  for  ten 
years  before. 

"  In  short,  were  I  to  tell  you  what 
they  say  about  me,  'twould  be  too  vain, 
though  I  am  now  writing  to  a  brother 
...  I  am  sorry  my  sisters  are  under 
such  uneasinesses,  and,  as  I  really  love 
both  them  and  you,  will  ever  make  it 
my  study  to  appear  your  affectionate 
brother,  D.  Garrick." 

A  less  modest  or  more  selfish  man 
would  have  thrown  off  with  some  im- 
patience the  weak  scruples  of  his  fam- 
ily about  loss  of  caste.  When  they 
found  their  brother  making  his  way 
in  the  highest  quarters,  and  becoming 
well  to  do  at  the  same  time,  the  views 
of  his  family  underwent  a  change.  It 
was  not,  however,  till  the  2nd  of  De- 
cember, 1741,  that  Garrick  threw  off 
the  mask  and  performed  under  his  own 
name.  By  this  time  even  they  must 
have  begun  to  doubt  whether  honor 
was  not  more  likely  to  accrue  to  them 
than  discredit  from  the  step  which  he 
had  taken.  But  it  must  have  been  no 
small  pain  to  hin  to  have  the  vulgar 
estimate  of  his  profession  thrown  so 
remorselessly  in  his  teeth  by  his  own 
kindred. 

Garrick  paid  the  actor's  accustomed 
penalty  for  success  by  being  overwork- 
ed. Between  nis  first  appearance  in  Oc- 
tober, 1741,  and  the  following  May, 
when  the  Goodman's  Fields  Theatre 
closed,  he  played  no  less  than  one  hun 


110 


DAVID   GARRIOK. 


dred  and  thirty-eight  times,  and  for  the 
most  part  in  characters  of  the  greatest 
weight  and  importance  in  both  tragedy 
and  comedy.  Among  the  former  were 
Richard,  Lear,  Pierre ;  among  the  lat- 
ter, Lord  Foppington,  in  Gibber's 
"Careless  Husband,"  Fondlewife  and 
Bayes.  The  range  of  character  and 
passion  which  these  parts  covered  was 
immense.  To  have  played  them  at  all, 
new  as  he  was  to  the  stage,  was  no 
common  feat  of  industry,  but  only  ge- 
nius of  the  most  remarkable  kind  could 
have  carried  him  through  them,  not 
only  without  injury,  but  with  positive 
increase,  to  the  high  reputation  his  first 
performances  had  created.  In  Bayes 
he  was  nearly  as  popular  as  in  Richard 
and  Lear ;  and  he  made  the  part  sub- 
servient to  his  purpose  of  exposing  the 
false  and  unnatural  style  into  which 
actors  had  fallen,  by  making  Bayes 
speak  his  turgid  heroics  in  imitation 
of  some  of  the  leading  performers. 
But  when  he  found  how  the  men  whose 
faults  he  burlesqued — good,  worthy 
men  in  their  way — were  made  wretch- 
ed by  seeing  themselves,  and  what 
they  did  in  all  seriousness,  held  up  to 
derision,  his  naturally  kind  heart  and 
good  taste  made  him  drop  these  imi- 
tations. Garrick's  true  vocation  was 
to  teach  his  brethren  a  purer  style  by 
his  own  example,  not  to  dishearten 
them  by  ridicule.  Mimicry,  besides, 
as  he  well  knew,  is  the  lowest  form  of 
the  actor's  art,  and  no  mere  mimic 
can  be  a  great  actor,  for  sincerity,  not 
simulation,  is  at  the  root  of  all  great- 
ness on  the  stage. 

The  success  of  Garrick  at  Goodman's 
Fields  emptied  the  patent  houses  at 
Covent  Garden  and  Drury  Lane,  and 


the  patentees  had  recourse  to  the  la\v 
to  compel  Giffard  to  close  his  theatre 
Ganick  was  secured  for  the  next  sea 
son  at  Drury  Lane.  But  as  that  house 
did  not  open  till  September,  and  the 
people  of  Dublin  were  impatient  to 
see  him,  he  started  off  for  that  city 
early  in  June,  and  remained  there  play- 
ing a  round  of  his  leading  parts  till 
the  middle  of  August.  An  epidemic 
which  raged  during  the  greater  part 
of  this  time,  caused  by  distress  among 
the  poor,  and  by  the  great  heat,  got 
the  name  of  the  Garrick  Fever.  But 
the  epidemic  which  he  really  caused 
was  not  among  the  poor,  but  among 
the  wits  and  fine  ladies  of  that  then 
fashionable  and  lively  city,  who  were 
not  likely  to  be  behind  his  English 
admirers  in  enthusiasm.  He  was  be- 
rhymed and  feted  on  all  hands,  and  from 
them  he  got  the  title  of  Roscius,  which 
to  this  hour  is  coupled  with  his  name. 
During  this  engagement  he  added 
Hamlet  to  his  list  of  characters.  Like 
his  Richard  and  his  Lear  it  was  treated 
in  a  manner  quite  his  own,  and  like 
them  it  was  from  the  first  a  success, 
but  was,  of  course,  much  elaborated 
and  modified  in  future  years. 

At  Drury  Lane  Garrick  found  him- 
self associated  with  his  old  friend 
Macklin,  who  was  deputy  manager 
and  with  that  "  dallying  and  danger 
ous"  beauty,  Peg  Woffington,  under 
whose  spell  he  appears  to  have  fallen 
as  early  as  1740.  As  an  actress  she 
was  admirable  for  the  life,  the  nature, 
and  the  grace  which  she  threw  into  all 
she  did,  set  off  by  a  fine  person,  and 
a  face,  which,  as  her  portraits  show, 
though  habitually  pensive  in  its  ex- 
pression, was  capable  of  kindling  into 


DAVID   GAKRICK. 


Ill 


passion,  or  beaming  with  the  sudden 
and  fitful  lights  of  feeling  and  fancy. 
She  had  been  literally  picked  out  of 
the  streets  of  Dublin  as  a  child  crying 
"  halfpenny  salads,"  and  trained  by  a 
rope-dancer,  Madame  Violante,  as  one 
of  a  Lilliputian  company,  in  which  she 
figured  in  such  parts  as  Captain  Mao- 
heath.  Like  Rachel  and  many  other 
celebrated  women,  she  contrived,  it  is 
Lard  to  say  how,  to  educate  herself,  so 

v  t  / 

that  she  could  hold  her  own  in  conver- 
sation in  any  society;  and  such  was 
her  natural  grace,  that  she  excelled  in 
characters  like  Millamant  and  Lady 
Townley,  in  which  the  well-bred  air  of 
good  society  was  essential.  Frank, 
kindly  and  impulsive,  she  had  also  wit 
at  will,  to  give  piquancy  to  the  expres- 
sions of  a  very  independent  turn  of 
mind.  She  never  scrupled  to  avow  that 
she  preferred  the  company  of  men  to 
that  of  women,  who  "  talked,"  she  said, 
"  of  nothing  but  silks  and  scandal."  The 
men  returned  the  compliment  by  being 
very  fond  of  her  company.  "  Forgive 
her  one  female  error,"  says  Murphy, 
"and  it  might  fairly  be  said  of  her 
that  she  was  adorned  with  every  vir- 
tue." But  when  Garrick  first  fell  un- 
der her  fascination,  these  frailties  had 
not  been  developed.  She  was  then  in 
the  bloom  of  her  beauty, — and  how 
charming  that  was  we  can  see  from 
Hogarth's  exquisite  portrait,  —  and 
though  suitors  of  wealth  and  rank 
surrounded  her,  genius  and  youth  had 
probably  more  charms  for  her  than 
gold  and  fine  living.  Garrick  was  deep- 
ly smitten  by  her,  and  he  seems  for  a 
time  to  have  thought  her  worthy  of  an 
honorable  love.  For  one  season  he  kept 
house  together  with  her  and  Macklin, 


and  they  were  visited  by  his  friends, 
Johnson  and  Dr.  Hoadley  among  the 
number.  It  was  thought  he  would 
marry  her ;  but  Peg's  aberrations — her 
"  one  female  error  " — grew  too  serious. 
She  was  in  truth  an  incurable  coquette. 
Garrick's  heart  was  touched,  hers  was 
not.  It  cost  him  a  good  many  strug- 
gles to  break  his  chains,  but  he  broke 
them  at  last,  and  left  her  finally  in  1745 
to  the  rakes  and  fools  who  were  out- 
bidding each  other  for  her  favors. 

He  was  worthy  of  a  better  mate; 
and  he  was  to  find  one  before  very 
long,  for  in  March  of  the  following 
year  (1746)  the  lady  came  to  England 
who  was  to  replace  his  feverish  passion 
for  the  wayward  Woffmgton,  by  a  de- 
votion which  grew  stronger  and  deeper 
with  every  year  of  his  life.  This  was 
the  fair  Eva  Maria  Veigel,  which  latter 
name  she  had  changed  for  its  French 
equivalent  Violette.  She  was  then 
twenty-one,  a  dancer,  and  had  come 
from  Vienna  with  recommendations 
from  the  Empress  Theresa,  who  was 
said  to  have  found  her  too  beautiful 
to  be  allowed  to  remain  within  reach 
of  the  Emperor  Frederick  I.  Jupiter 
Carlyle,  returning  from  his  studies  at 
Leyden,  found  himself  in  the  same 
packet  with  her,  crossing  from  Helvoet 
to  Harwich.  She  was  disguised  in  male 
attire,  and  this,  although  traveling  un- 
der the  protection  of  a  person  who  call- 
ed himself  her  father,  and  two  other 
foreigners.  Carlyle  took  the  seeming 
youth  for  "  a  Hanoverian  Baron  com- 
ing to  Britain  to  pay  his  court  at  St. 
James's."  But  the  lady  becoming 
alarmed  by  a  storm  during  the  pas- 
sage, her  voice,  no  less  than  her  fears, 
at  once  betrayed  her  to  Carlyle.  This 


118 


DAYID   GAKBICK. 


led  to  an  avowal  of  her  profession,  and 
of  the  object  of  her  journey,  and  the 
vouno*  handsome  Scotchman  took  care 

/  o 

not  to  leave  London  without  seeing  his 
fair  fellow-traveler  on  the  Opera  stage, 
where  he  found  her  dancing  to  be  "  ex- 
quisite." Such  was  the  general  ver- 
dict. The  dancing  of  those  days  was 
not  a  thing  in  which  every  womanly 
feeling,  every  refined  grace,  was  vio- 
lated. It  aspired  to  delight  by  the 
poetry  of  motion,  not  to  amaze  by  com- 
plexities of  distortion,  or  brilliant  mar- 
vels of  muscular  force.  Beautiful, 
modest,  accomplished,  the  Violette  not 
only  charmed  on  the  stage,  but  soon 
found  her  way  into  fashionable  society. 
So  early  as  June,  1746,  Horace  Walpole 
writes  to  his  friend  Montague :  "  The 
fame  of  the  Violette  increases  daily. 
The  sister  Countesses  of  Burlington 
and  Talbot  exert  all  their  stores  of 
sullen  partiality  and  competition  for 
her."  The  Countess  of  Burlington 
took  her  to  live  with  her,  and  was  in 
the  habit  of  attending  her  to  the  the- 
atre, and  waiting  at  the  side- wings  to 

'  O  O 

throw  a  shawl  over  her  as  she  left  the 
stage.  These  attentions,  due  solely  to 
the  charm  of  the  young  lady,  and  the 
enthusiasm  of  her  patroness,  were  quite 
enough  to  set  in  motion  the  tongues  of 
the  Mrs.  Candors  and  Sir  Benjamin 
Backbites  of  society.  The  Violette, 
they  began  to  whisper,  was  a  daughter 
of  Lord  Burlington,  by  a  Florentine  of 
rank;  and  when,  upon  her  marriage 
with  Garrick  in  1749,  she  received  a 
handsome  marriage  portion  from  the 
countess,  this  was  considered  conclu- 
sive evidence  of  the  scandal.  It  was 
not,  however,  from  the  earl,  but  from 
the  countess  that  the  dowry  came.  It 


consisted  of  a  sum  of  five  thousand 
pounds,  secured  on  one  of  her  lady- 
ship's Lincolnshire  estates,  Garrick  on 
his  part  settling  ten  thousand  pounds 
on  his  bride,  with  seventy  pounds  a 
year  of  pin-money.  It  is  quite  possi- 
ble that  the  security  for  five  thousand 
pounds  granted  by  the  countess  was 
simply  an  equivalent  for  some  such 
sum  previously  handed  over  to  her  by 
the  young  lady.  But  the  parties  kept 
their  own  counsel  in  their  arrange- 
ments, and  so  left  the  busy-bodies  at 
fault. 

The  countess,  it  is  said,  looked  higher 
for  her  young  friend  than  the  great 
player,  as  a  countess  with  so  cele- 
brated a  beauty  in  hand  was  likely  to 
do ;  and  it  was  not  without  difficulty 
that  Garrick  won  what  proved  to  be 
the  great  prize  of  his  life.  He  had  on 
one  occasion  to  disguise  himself  as  a 
woman,  in  order  to  convey  a  letter  to 
his  mistress.  But  the  fact  of  her  receiv 
ing  it  bespeaks  the  foregone  conclusion 
that  he  had  won  her  heart ;  and,  that 
fact  once  ascertained,  the  countess  was 
probably  too  wise  to  oppose  further 
resistance.  How  attractive  in  person 
the  young  dancer  was  her  portraits  sur- 
vive to  tell  us.  What  her  lover  thought 
of  her  appears  from  some  verses  which 
he  wrote  in  the  first  happiness  of  what 
we  cannot  call  his  honeymoon,  for  their 
whole  married  life  was  one  honeymoon 

"  'Tis  not,  my  friend,  her  speaking  face, 
Her  shape,  her  youth,  her  winning  grace, 
Have  reached  my  heart ;  the  fair  one's  mind 
Quick  as  her  eyes,  yet  soft  and  kind — 
A  gayety  with  innocence, 
A  soft  address,  with  manly  sense  ; 
Ravishing  manners   void  of  art, 
A  cheerful,  firm,  yet  feeling  heart, 
Beauty  that  charms  all  public  gaze, 
And  humble,  amid  pomp  and  praise." 


DAYID   GARRICK. 


119 


What  Garrick  owed  to  the  happy  cir- 
cumstances of  his  marriage,  can  scarcely 
be  stated  too  highly.  In  his  home  he 
found  all  the  solace  which  grace,  re- 
finement, fine  intelligence,  and  entire 
sympathy  could  give.  As  artist,  these 
were  invaluable  to  him;  as  manager, 
a  man  of  his  sensibilities  must  have 
broken  down  without  them.  In  1747, 
two  years  before  his  marriage,  he  had, 
along  with  Mr.  Lacy,  become  patentee 
of  Drury  Lane  Theatre,  to  which  his 
performances  had  been  confined,  with 
the  exception  of  a  second  visit  to  Dub- 
lin in  1745-6,  and  a  short  engagement 
at  Covent  Garden  in  1746-7.  So  well 
had  he  husbanded  his  means  since  his 
debut  at  the  end  of  1741,  that  he  was 
able,  with  some  help  from  friends,  to 
find  eight  thousand  pounds  of  the 
twelve  thousand  pounds  which  were 
required  for  the  enterprise.  Lacy  took 
charge  of  the  business  details,  while  all 
that  related  to  the  performances  de- 
volved upon  Garrick.  He  got  together 
the  very  best  company  that  could  be 
had,  for,  to  use  his  own  words,  he 
"thought  it  the  interest  of  the  best 
actors  to  be  together,"  knowing  well, 
that  apart  from  the  great  gain  in  gen- 
eral effect,  this  combination  brings  out 
all  that  is  best  in  the  actors  themselves. 
At  starting,  therefore,  he  drew  round 
him  Mrs.  Gibber,  Mrs.  Pritchard,  Mrs. 
Clive,  Mrs.  Woffington,  among  the  wo- 
men ;  Barry,  Macklin,  Delane,  Havard, 
Sparks,  Shuter,  among  the  men.  Later 
on  he  secured  Quin  and  Woodward,  and, 
whenever  he  could,  he  drew  into  his  com- 
pany whatever  ability  was  in  the  mar- 
ket. He  determined  to  bring  back  the 
public  taste,  if  possible,  from  panto- 
mime and  farce,  to  performances  of  a 


more  intellectual  stamp.  Johnson 
wrote  his  fine  prologue  to  announce 
the  principles  on  which  the  theatre 
was  to  be  conducted,  and  threw  upon 
the  public,  and  with  justice,  the  re 
sponsibility,  should  these  miscarry,  by 
the  well-known  lines, — 

"The  drama's  laws  the  drama's  patrons  give, 
For  those,  who  live  to  please,  must  please  to 
live." 

The  public,  as  usual,  fell  back  after  a 
time  upon  its  love  for  "inexplicable 
dumb  show  and  noise,"  and  Garrick  had 
no  choice  but  to  indulge  its  taste.  But 
in  these  early  days  the  array  of  varied 
ability  which  his  company  presented, 
backed  by  his  own  genius,  filled,  as  it 
well  might,  the  theatre  nightly. 

Garrick's  sympathies  with  literature 
and  literary  men  were  very  great.  He 
formed  a  fine  library,  and  not  only 
formed  but  used  it.  He  was  well  vers- 
ed in  the  literature  of  Europe,  especial- 
ly of  Italy  and  France.  He  wrote  well 
himself.  His  prologues  and  vers  de  socie- 
te  are  even  now  pleasant  reading.  He 
would  turn  off  one  of  his  prologues  or 
epilogues  in  two  hours.  As  a  rule,  an 
epigram  —  such  as  his  famous  one  on 
Goldsmith  —  took  him  five  minutes. 
There  was  no  man  of  literary  eminence 
in  England  with  whom  he  was  not  on 
a  friendly  footing.  "  It  has  been  the 
business,  and  ever  will  be,  of  my  life," 
he  wrote  to  Goldsmith  in  1757,  "  to 
live  on  the  best  terms  with  men  of  ge- 
nius." When  such  men  wanted  money, 
his  purse  was  always  at  their  command 
and  in  the  handsomest  way.  Sterne, 
Churchill,  Johnson,  Goldsmith,  Mur- 
phy, Foote,  had  many  proofs  of  this 
helpful  sympathy,  not  to  speak  of  men 
of  lesser  note. 


120 


DAVID   GARRICK. 


"  The  animated  graces  of  the  player," 
Colley  Gibber  Las  well  said,  "  can  live 
no  longer  than  the  instant  breath  and 
motion  that  present  them,  or  at  best 
can  but  faintly  glimmer  through  the 
memory  or  imperfect  attestation  of  a 
few  surviving  spectators."  There  are 
many  descriptions,  and  good  ones,  of 
Garrick's  acting ;  but  the  most  vivid 
pen  can  sketch  but  faintly  even  the 
outlines  of  an  actor's'work,  and  all  the 
finest  touches  of  his  art  necessarily 
perish  with  the  moment.  Of  Garrick, 
however,  we  get  some  glimpses  of  a 
very  life-like  kind,  from  the  letters  of 
Lichtenberg,  the  celebrated  Hogarthian 
critic,  to  his  friend  Boie.  Lichtenberg 
saw  Garrick  in  the  autumn  of  1775, 
when  he  was  about  to  leave  the  stage, 
in  Abel  Drugger,  in  Archer  in  the 
"  Beaux  Stratagem,"  in  Sir  John  Brute 
in  the  "  Provoked  Wife,"  in  Hamlet, 
in  Lusignan  in  Aaron  Hill's  version  of 
"  Zaire,"  and  in  Don  Leon  in  Beau- 
mont and  Fletcher's  "  Rule  a  "Wife  and 
Have  a  Wife."  He  brought  to  the 
task  of  chronicler  powers  of  observa- 
tion and  a  critical  faculty  scarcely 
second  to  Lessing's.  "  What  is  it,"  he 
writes,  "  which  gives  to  this  man  his 
great  superiority  ?  The  causes,  my 
friend,  are  numerous,  and  very  very 
much  is  due  to  his  peculiarly  happy 
organization.  .  .  .  In  his  entire  figure, 
movements,  and  bearing,  Mr.  Garrick 
has  a  something  which  I  have  seen 
twice  in  a  modified  degree  among  the 
few  Frenchmen  I  have  known,  but 
which  I  have  never  met  with  among 
the  many  Englishmen  who  have  come 
under  my  notice.  In  saying  this  I 
mean  Frenchmen  of  middle  age,  and 
good  society,  of  course.  If,  for  exam- 


ple, he  turns  towards  any  one  with  an 
inclination  of  the  person,  it  is  not  the 
head,  not  the  shoulders,  not  the  feet 
and  arms  alone,  that  are  employed,  but 
each  combines  harmoniously  to  produce 
a  result  that  is  most  agreeable  and  apt 
to  the  situation.  When  he  steps  upon 
the  stage,  though  not  moved  by  fear, 
hope,  jealousy,  or  other  emotion,  at 
once  you  see  him  and  him  alone.  He 
walks  and  bears  himself  among  the 
other  performers  like  a  man  among 
marionettes.  From  what  I  have  said, 
no  one  will  form  any  idea  of  Mr.  Gai 
rick's  deportment,  unless  he  has  at 
some  time  had  his  attention  arrested 
by  the  demeanour  of  such  a  well-bred 
Frenchman  as  I  have  indicated,  in 
which  case  this  hint  would  be  the  best 
description.  His  stature  inclines  ra- 
ther to  the  under  than  the  middle  size, 
and  his  figure  is  thickset.  His  limbs 
are  charmingly  proportioned,  and  the 
whole  man  is  put  together  in  the  neat- 
est way.  The  most  practiced  eye  can- 
not detect  a  flaw  about  him,  either  in 
details,  or  in  ensemble,  or  in  movement. 
In  the  latter  one  is  charmed  to  observe 
a  rich  reserve  of  power,  which,  as  you 
are  aware,  when  well  indicated,  is  more 
agreeable  than  a  profuse  expenditure 
of  it.  There  is  nothing  flurried,  or 
flaccid,  or  languid  about  him,  and 
where  other  actors  in  the  motion  of 
their  arms  and  legs  allow  themselves  a 
space  of  six  or  more  inches  on  either 
side  of  what  is  graceful,  he  hits  the 
right  thing  to  a  hair,  with  admirable 
firmness  and  certainty.  His  manner 
of  walking,  of  shrugging  his  shoulders, 
of  tucking  in  his  arms,  of  putting  on 
his  hat,  at  one  time  pressing  it  over  hia 
eyes,  at  another  pushing  it  sideways 


DAYID  GAKEICK. 


121 


off  Ms  forehead,  all  done  with  an  airy 
motion  of  the  limbs,  as  though  he  were 
all  right  hand,  is  consequently  refresh- 
ing to  witness.  One  feels  one's  self 
vigorous  and  elastic,  as  one  sees  the 
vigor  and  precision  of  his  movements, 
and  how  perfectly  at  ease  he  seems  to 
be  in  every  muscle  of  his  body.  If  I 
mistake  not,  his  compact  figure  contrib- 
utes not  a  little  to  this  effect.  His  sym- 
metrically formed  limbs  taper  down- 
ward from  a  robust  thigh,  closing  in 
the  neatest  foot  you  can  imagine ;  and 
in  like  manner  his  muscular  arm  ta- 
pers off  into  a  small  hand.  What  ef- 
fect this  must  produce  you  can  easily 
imagine." 

A  description  like  this,  aided  by  the 
many  admirable  portraits  which  exist, 
enables  us  to  see  the  very  man,  not 
merely  as  he  appeared  on  the  stage, 
but  also  as  he  moved  in  the  brilliant 
social  circle,  which  he  quickened  by 
the  vivacity,  the  drollery,  the  gallant 
tenderness  to  women,  and  the  kindly 
wit,  which  made  him,  in  Goldsmith's 
happy  phrase,  "  the  abridgment  of  all 
that  is  pleasant  in  man."  When  Lich- 
tenberg  saw  Garrick  he  was  fifty-nine. 
But  with  such  a  man,  as  Kitty  Clive 
had  said  of  herself  and  him  some  years 
before, "  What  signifies  fifty-nine  ?  The 
public  had  rather  see  the  Garrick  and 
the  Clive  at  a  hundred  and  four  than 
any  of  the  moderns."  His  was  a  spirit 
of  the  kind  that  keeps  at  bay  the  signs 
of  age.  "  Gout,  stone,  and  sore  throat," 
as  he  wrote  about  this  period ;  "  yet  I 
am  in  spirits."  To  the  two  first  of 
these  he  had  long  been  a  martyr,  and 
sometimes  suffered  horribly  from  the 
exertion  of  acting.  When  he  had  to 
play  Richard,  he  told  Craddock,  "I 
16 


dread  the  fight  and  the  fall ;  I  am  af- 
terwards in  agonies."  But  the  audi- 
ence saw  nothing  of  this,  nor,  in  the 
heat  of  the  performance,  was  he  con- 
scious of  it  himself.  It  is  obvious  that 
Lichtenberg  at  least  saw  no  trace  in 
him  of  failing  power,  or  of  the  bodily 
weakness  which  had  for  some  time  been 
warning  him  to  retire.  He  had  medi- 
tated this  for  several  years;  but  at  last, 
in  1775,  his  resolution  was  taken.  His 
illnesses  were  growing  more  frequent 
and  more  severe.  People  were  beginning 
to  discuss  his  age  in  the  papers,  and, 
with  execrable  taste,  a  public  appeal 
was  made  to  him  by  Governor  Penn 
to  decide  a  bet  which  had  been  made 
that  he  was  sixty.  "  As  you  have  so 
kindly  pulled  off  my  mask,"  he  replied, 
"  it  is  time  for  me  to  make  my  exit." 
He  had  accumulated  a  large  fortune. 
The  actors  and  actresses  with  whom 
his  greatest  triumphs  were  associated 
were  either  dead  or  in  retirement. 
Their  successors,  inferior  in  all  ways, 
were  little  to  his  taste.  The  worries 
of  management,  the  ceaseless  wrang- 
ling with  actors  and  authors  which  it 
involved,  fretted  him  more  than  ever. 
He  had  lived  enough  for  fame,  and 
yearned  for  freedom  and  rest.  At 
the  end  of  1775  he  disposed  of  his  in- 
terest in  Drury  Lane  to  Sheridan,  Lin- 
ley,  and  Ford.  "  Now,"  he  wrote,  "  I 
shall  shake  off  my  chains,  and  no  cul- 
prit in  a  jail-delivery  will  be  happier." 
When  his  resolution  to  leave  the 
stage  was  known  to  be  finally  taken, 
there  was  a  rush  from  all  parts,  not  of 
England  only,  but  of  Europe,  to  see 
his  last  performances.  Such  were  the 
crowds,  that  foreigners  who  had  come 
to  England  for  the  purpose  were  un- 


122 


DAVID   GAEKICK. 


able  to  gain  admission.  While  all 
sorts  of  grand  people  were  going  on 
their  knees  to  him  for  a  box,  with 
characteristic  kindness,  he  did  not  for- 
get his  humbler  friends. 

The  piece  selected  for  his  farewell 
was  "  The  Wonder ; "  and  it  was  an- 
nounced, with  Garrick's  usual  good 
taste,  simply  as  a  performance  for  "  the 
benefit  of  the  Theatrical  Fund."  No 
gigantic  posters,  no  newspaper  puffs 
clamorously  invoked  the  public  inter- 
est. The  town  knew  only  too  well 
what  it  was  going  to  lose,  and  every 
corner  of  the  theatre  was  crammed. 
In  his  zeal  for  the  charity  of  which  he 
was  the  founder,  and  to  which  this 
"  mean  "  man  contributed  over  £5000, 
Garrick  had  written  an  occasional  Pro- 
logue, to  bespeak  the  good- will  of  his 
audience  in  its  favor.  It  has  all  his 
wonted  vivacity  and  point,  and  one 
line — 

"A  fellow-feeling  makes  one  wondrous  kind  " — 

has  passed  into  a  household  phrase. 
This  he  spoke  as  only  he  could  speak 
such  things.  He  had  entire  command 
of  his  spirits,  and  he  even  thought  that 
he  never  played  Don  Felix  to  more 
advantage.  So,  at  least,  he  wrote  to 
Madame  Necker  eight  days  afterwards ; 
but  when  it  came  to  taking  the  last 
farewell,  he  adds — "  I  not  only  lost  the 
use  of  my  voice,  but  of  my  limbs,  too ; 
it  was  indeed,  as  I  said,  a  most  awful 
moment.  You  would  not  have  thought 
an  English  audience  void  of  feeling,  if 
you  had  then  seen  and  heard  them. 
After  I  had  left  the  stage,  and  was 
dead  to  them,  they  would  not  suffer 


the  petite  piece  to  go  on ;  nor  would  the 
actors  perform,  they  were  so  affected ; 
in  short,  the  public  was  very  generous, 
and  I  am  most  grateful." 

Garrick  did  not  enjoy  his  retirement 
long.  While  on  his  wonted  Christmas 
visit  to  the  Spencers  at  Althorpe,  in 
1778,  he  was  attacked  by  his  old  ail- 
ment. He  hurried  back  to  his  house 
in  the  Adelphi,  and,  after  some  days 
of  great  pain  and  prostration,  died 
upon  the  20th  of  January  following. 
His  funeral  at  Westminster  Abbey 
was  upon  an  imposing  scale.  Among 
the  pall-bearers  were  Lord  Camden,  the 
Duke  of  Devonshire,  Lord  Spencer, 
Viscount  Palmerston,  and  Sir  W.  W. 
Wynne,  and  the  members  of  the  Lite- 
rary Club  attended  in  a  body.  "  I  saw 
old  Samuel  Johnson,"  says  Cumber- 
land, "standing  beside  his  grave, 
at  the  foot  of  Shakespeare's  monu- 
ment, and  bathed  in  tears."  Johnson 
wrote  of  the  event  afterwards  as 
one  that  had  eclipsed  the  gayety  of 
nations. 

In  October,  1822,  at  the  extreme  age 
of  ninety-eight,  Mrs.  Garrick  was  found 
dead  in  her  chair,  having  lived  in  full 
possession  of  her  faculties  to  the  last. 
For  thirty  years  she  would  not  suffer 
the  room  to  be  opened  in  which  her 
husband  had  died.  "  He  never  was  a 
husband  to  me,"  she  said,  in  her  old 
age,  to  a  friend ;  "  during  the  thirty 
years  of  our  marriage  he  was  always 
my  lover!"  She  was  buried,  in  her 
wedding  sheets,  at  the  base  of  Shake- 
speare's statue,  in  the  same  grave 
which  forty-three  years  before  had 
closed  over  her  "  dear  Davie." 


GEORGE    WASHINGTON. 


THE  traditions  of  the  "Washington 
family  in  England  have  been  car- 
ried back  to  the  picturesque  era  of  the 
early  days  of  the  Plantagenets,  when 
the  De  Wessyngtons  did  manorial  ser- 
vice in  the  battle  and  the  chase,  to  the 
military  Bishop  of  Durham.  Follow- 
ing these  spirited  scenes  through  the 
fourteenth  century  to  the  fifteenth,  we 
have  a  glimpse  of  John  de  Wessyng- 
ton,  a  stout,  controversial  abbot  attach- 
ed to  the  cathedral.  After  him,  we  are 
called  upon  to  trace  the  family  in  the 
various  parts  of  England,  and  particu- 
larly in  its  branch  of  Washingtons — 
for  so  the  spelling  of  the  name  had 
now  become  determined — at  Sulgrave, 
in  Northamptonshire.  They  were  loy- 
alists in  the  Cromwellian  era,  when  Sir 
Henry  gained  renown  by  his  defence 
of  Worcester.  While  this  event  was 
quite  recent,  two  brothers  of  the  race, 
John  and  Lawrence,  emigrated  to  Vir- 
ginia in  1657,  and  established  them- 
selves as  planters,  in  Westmoreland 
county,  bordering  on  the  Potomac  and 
Rappahannock,  in  the  midst  of  a  dis- 
trict destined  to  produce  many  emi- 
nent men  for  the  service  of  a  State 
then  undreamt  of.  One  of  these  broth- 
ers, John,  a  colonel  in  the  Virginia 


service,  was  the  grandfather  of  Augus- 
tine, who  married  Mary  Ball,  the  belle 
of  the  county,  and  became  the  parent 
of  George  Washington.  The  family 
home  was  on  Bridges'  Creek,  near  the 
banks  of  the  Potomac,  where,  the  old- 
est of  six  children  by  this  second  mar- 
riage of  his  father,  the  illustrious  sub- 
ject of  our  sketch  was  born  on  the 
twenty-second  of  February,  1732. 

Augustine  Washington  was  the  own- 
er of  several  estates  in  this  region  of 
the  two  rivers,  to  one  of  which,  on  the 
Rappahannock,  in  Stafford  County,  he 
removed  shortly  after  his  son's  birth, 
and  there  the  boy  received  his  first  im- 
pressions. He  was  not  destined  to  be 
much  indebted  to  schools  or  school-mas- 
ters. His  father,  indeed,  was  not  in- 
sensible to  the  advantages  of  education, 
since,  according  to  the  custom  of  those 
days  with  wealthy  planters,  he  had 
sent  Lawrence,  his  oldest  son  by  his 
previous  marriage,  to  be  educated  in 
England;  an  opportunity  which  was 
not  given  him  in  the  case  of  George ;  for 
before  the  boy  was  of  an  age  to  leave 
home  on  such  a  journey,  the  father  was 
suddenly  taken  out  of  the  world  by  an 
attack  of  gout.  This  event  happened 
in  April,  1743,  when  George  was  lefi 

(123) 


124: 


GEORGE  WASHINGTON. 


to  the  guardianship  of  his  mother.  The 
honest  merits  of  Mary,  "  the  mother  of 
Washington,"  have  often  been  matters 
of  comment.  All  that  is  preserved  of 
this  lady,  who  survived  her  husband 
forty-six  years,  and  of  course  lived  to 
witness  the  matured  triumphs  of  her 
son — he  was  seated  in  the  Presidential 
chair  when  she  died — bears  witness  to 
her  good  sense  and  simplicity,  the 
plainness  and  sincerity  of  her  house- 
hold virtues. 

The  domestic  instruction  of  Wash- 
ington was  of  the  best  and  purest.  He 
had  been  early  indoctrinated  in  the 
rudiments  of  learning,  in  the  "field 
school,"  by  a  village  pedagogue,  named 
Hobby,  one  of  his  father's  tenants,  who 
joined  to  his  afflictive  calling  the  more 
melancholy  profession  of  sexton  —  a 
shabby  member  of  the  race  of  instruc- 
tors, who  in  his  old  age  kept  up  the 
association  by  getting  patriotically  fud- 
dled on  his  pupils'  birth-days.  The 
boy  could  have  learnt  little  there  which 
was  not  better  taught  at  home.  Indeed 
we  find  his  mother  inculcating  the  best 
precepts.  In  addition  to  the  Scriptures 
and  the  lessons  of  the  Church,  which 
always  form  the  most  important  part 
of  such  a  child's  education,  she  had  a 
book  of  excellent  wisdom,  as  the  event 
proved,  especially  suitable  for  the 
guidance  of  her  son's  future  life,  in 
Sir  Matthew  Hale's  "  Contemplations, 
Moral  and  Divine  " — a  book  written  by 
one  who  had  attained  high  public  dis- 
tinction, and  who  tells  the  secret  of  his 
worth  and  success.  The  very  volume 
out  of  which  Washington  was  thus 
taught  by  his  mother  is  preserved  at 
Mount  Vernon.  He  had,  however,  some 
limited  school  instruction  with  a  Mr. 


Williams,  whom  he  attended  from  hia 
half  brother,  Augustine's  home,  in 
Westmoreland,  and  from  whom  he 
learnt  a  knowledge  of  accounts,  in 
which  he  was  always  skilful.  He  had 
also  particular  instructions  from  Mr. 
Williams  in  geometry,  trigonometry, 
and  surveying,  in  which  he  became  an 
adept,  writing  out  his  examples  in  the 
neatest  and  most  careful  manner.  This 
was  a  branch  of  instruction  more  im- 
portant to  him  than  Latin  and  Greek; 
of  which  he  was  taught  nothing,  and 
one  that  he  turned  to  account  through 
life.  All  the  school  instruction  which 
Washington  received  was  thus  com- 
pleted before  he  was  sixteen. 

On  leaving  school,  young  Washing- 
ton appears  to  have  taken  up  his  resi- 
dence with  his  brother  at  Mount  Ver- 
non, where  he  was  introduced  to  new 
social  influences  of  a  liberal  character 
in  the  family  society  of  the  Fairfaxes 
Lawrence  was  married  to  a  daughter 
of  William  Fairfax,  a  gentleman  of 
much  experience  and  adventure  about 
the  world,  who  resided  at  his  neigh- 
boring seat  "  Belvoir,"  on  the  Potomac, 
and  superintended,  as  agent,  the  large 
landed  operations  of  his  cousin,  Lord 
Fairfax.  Surveys  were  to  be  made  to 
keep  possession  of  the  lands,  and  bring 
them  into  the  market ;  and  who  so  well 
adapted  for  this  service  as  the  youth 
who  had  made  the  science  an  object  of 
special  study  ?  We  consequently  find 
him  regularly  retained  in  this  service. 
His  journal,  at  the  age  of  sixteen,  re- 
mains to  tell  us  of  the  duties  and  ad- 
ventures of  the  journey,  as  he  travers- 
ed the  outlying  rough  ways  and  pas- 
sages of  the  South  Branch  of  the 
Potomac.  It  is  a  short  record  of  camp 


GEOKGE   WASHINGTON. 


125 


incidents  and  -the  progress  of  his  sur- 
veys for  a  month  in  the  wilderness,  in 
the  spring  of  1748,  the  prelude,  in  its 
introduction  to  Indians  and  the  expos- 
ares  of  camp  life,  to  many  rougher 
scenes  of  military  service,  stretching 
westward  from  the  region. 

Three  years  were  passed  in  expedi- 
tions of  this  nature,  the  young  survey- 
or making  his  home  in  his  intervals 
of  duty  mostly  at  Mount  Vernon.  The 
health  of  his  brother,  the  owner  of  this 
place,  to  whom  he  was  much  attached, 
was  now  failing  with  consumption,  and 
George  accompanied  him  in  one  of  his 
tours  for  health  in  the  autumn  of  1751, 
to  Barbadoes.  As  usual,  he  kept  a 
journal  of  his  observations,  which 
tells  us  of  the  every-day  living  and 
hospitalities  of  the  place,  with  a  shrewd 
glance  at  its  agricultural  resources  and 
the  conduct  of  its  governor.  A  few 
lines  cover  nearly  a  month  of  the  visit ; 
they  record  an  attack  of  the  small-pox,  of 
which  his  countenance  always  bore  some 
faint  traces.  Leaving  his  brother,  par- 
tially recruited,  to  pursue  his  way  to 
Bermuda,  George  returned  in  February 
to  Virginia.  The  health  of  Lawrence, 
however,  continued  to  decline,  and  in 
the  ensuing  summer  he  died  at  Mount 
Vernon.  The  estate  was  left  to  a 
daughter,  who,  dying  in  infancy,  the 
property  passed,  according  to  the  terms 
of  the  will,  into  the  possession  of  George, 
who  thus  became  the  owner  of  his  mem- 
orable home. 

Previous  to  this  time,  rumors  of  im- 
minent French  and  Indian  aggressions 
on  the  frontier  began  to  engage  the  at- 
tention of  the  colony,  and  preparations 
were  making  to  resist  the  threatened 

O 

attack.     The  province  was  divided  in- 


to districts  for  enlistment  and  organi- 
zation of  the  militia,  over  one  of  which 
Washington  was  placed,  with  the  rank 
of  major,  in  1751,  when  he  was  but  nine- 
teen— a  mark  of  confidence  sustained 
by  his  youthful  studies  and  experience, 
but  in  which  his  family  influence,  doubt- 
less, had  its  full  share.  We  hear  of  his 
attention  to  military  exercises  at  Mount 
Vernon,  and  of  some  special  hints  and 
instructions  from  one  Adjutant  Ware, 
a  Virginian,  and  a  Dutchman,  Jacob 
Van  Braam,  who  gave  him  lessons  in 
fencing.  Both  of  these  worthies  had 
been  the  military  companions  of  Law- 
rence Washington  in  the  West  Indies. 
In  1753,  the  year  following  his 
brother's  death,  the  affairs  on  the  fron- 
tier becoming  pressing,  Governor  Din- 
widdie  stood  in  need  of  a  resolute 
agent,  to  bear  a  message  to  the  French 
commander  on  the  Ohio,  remonstrating 
against  the  advancing  occupation  of 
the  territory.  It  was  a  hazardous  ser- 
vice crossing  a  rough,  intervening  wil- 
derness, occupied  by  unfriendly  Indi- 
ans, and  it  was  a  high  compliment  to 
Washington  to  select  him  for  the  duty. 
Amply  provided  with  instructions,  he 
left  William  sburg  on  the  mission  on 
the  last  day  of  October,  and,  by  the 
middle  of  November,  reached  the  ex 
treme  frontier  settlement  at  Will's 
Creek.  Thence,  with  his  little  party 
of  eight,  he  pursued  his  way  to  the 
fork  of  the  Ohio,  where,  with  a  military 
eye,  he  noted  the  advantageous  posi- 
tion subsequently  selected  as  the  site 
of  Fort  Du  Quesne,  and  now  the  flour- 
ishing city  of  Pittsburg.  He  then  held 
a  council  of  the  Indians  at  Logstown, 
and  procured  guides  to  the  station  oi 
the  French  commandant,  a  hundred 


126 


GEORGE  WASHINGTON. 


and  twenty  miles  distant,  in  the  vicin- 
ity of  Lake  Erie,  which  he  reached  on 
the  llth  of  December.  An  interview 
having  been  obtained,  the  message  de- 
livered and  an  answer  received,  the 
most  hazardous  part  of  the  expedition 
yet  lay  before  the  party  in  their  return 
home.  They  were  exposed  to  frozen 
streams,  the  winter  inclemencies,  the 
perils  of  the  wilderness  and  Indian 
hostilities,  when  Indian  hostilities  were 
most  cruel.  To  hasten  his  homeward 
journey,  Washington  separated  from 
the  rest,  with  a  single  companion.  His 
life  was  more  than  once  in  danger  on 
the  way,  first  from  the  bullet  of  an  In- 
dian, and  during  a  night  of  extraordi- 
nary severity,  in  crossing  the  violent 
Alleghany  river  on  a  raft  beset  with  ice. 
Escaping  these  disasters,  he  reached 
Williamsburg  on  the  16th  of  January, 
and  gave  the  interesting  journal  now 
included  in  his  writings  as  the  report 
of  his  proceedings.  It  was  at  once 
published  by  the  Governor,  and  was 
speedily  reprinted  in  London. 

The  observations  of  Washington,  and 
the  reply  which  he  brought,  confirmed 
the  growing  impressions  of  the  designs 
of  the  French,  and  military  prepara- 
tions were  kept  up  with  spirit.  A 
Virginia  regiment  of  three  hundred 
was  raised  for  frontier  service,  and 
Washington  was  appointed  its  Lieu- 
tenant-Colonel. Advancing  with  a 
portion  of  the  force  of  which  he  had 
command,  he  learnt  that  the  French 
were  in  the  field,  and  had  commenced 
hostilities.  Watchful  of  their  move- 
ments, he  fell  in  with  a  party  under 
Jumonville,  in  the  neighborhood  of  the 
Great  Meadows,  which  he  put  to  flight 
with  the  death  of  their  leader.  His 


own  superior  officer  having  died  on  the 
march,  the  entire  command  fell  upon 
Washington,  who  was  also  joined  by 
some  additional  troops  from  South 
Carolina  and  New  York.  With  these 
he  was  on  his  way  to  attack  Fort  Du 
Quesne,  when  word  was  brought  of  a 
large  superior  force  of  French  and  In- 
dians coming  against  him.  This  in- 
telligence led  him,  in  his  unprepared 
state,  to  retrace  his  steps  to  Fort  Ne 
cessity,  at  the  Great  Meadows,  where 
he  received  the  attack.  The  fort  was 
gallantly  defended  both  within  and 
without,  Washington  commanding  in 
front,  and  it  was  not  until  serious  loss 
had  been  inflicted  on  the  assailants 
that  it  surrendered  to  superior  num- 
bers. In  the  capitulation  the  garrison 
was  allowed  to  return  home  with  the 
honors  of  war.  A  second  time  the  Le- 
gislature of  Virginia  thanked  her  re- 
turning officer. 

The  military  career  of  Washington 
was  now  for  a  time  interrupted  by  a 
question  of  etiquette.  An  order  was 
issued  in  favor  of  the  officers  holding 
the  king's  commission  outranking  the 
provincial  appointments.  Washington, 
who  knew  the  worth  of  his  countrymen, 
and  the  respect  due  himself,  would  not 
submit  to  this  injustice,  and  the  estate 
of  Mount  Vernon  now  requiring  his 
attention,  he  withdrew  from  the  army 
to  its  rural  occupations.  He  was  not, 
however,  suffered  to  remain  there  long 
in  inactivity.  The  arrival  of  General 
Braddock,  with  his  forces,  in  the  river", 
called  him  into  action  at  the  summons 
of  that  officer,  who  was  attracted  by 
his  experience  and  accomplishments. 
Washington,  anxious  to  serve  his  coun- 
try, readily  accepted  an  appointment  as 


GEOKGE  WASHINGTON. 


127 


one  of  the  general's  military  family, 
the  question  of  rank  being  thus  dis- 
pensed with.  He  joined  the  army  on 
its  onward  march  at  "Winchester,  and 
proceeded  with  it,  though  he  had  been 
taken  ill  with  a  raging  fever,  to  the 
Great  Crossing  of  the  Youghiogany. 
Here  he  was  compelled  to  remain  with 
the  rear  of  the  army,  by  the  positive 
injunctions  of  the  general,  from  whom 
he  exacted  his  "  word  of  honor  "  that 
he  "  should  be  brought  up  before  he 
reached  the  French  fort."  This  he  ac- 
complished, though  he  was  too  ill  to 
make  the  journey  on  horseback,  arriv- 
ing at  the  mouth  of  the  Youghiogany, 
in  the  immediate  vicinity  of  the  fatal 
battle-field,  the  evening  before  the  en- 
gagement. In  the  events  of  that  me- 
morable 9th  of  July,  1755,  he  was  des- 
tined to  bear  a  conspicuous  part.  From, 
the  beginning,  he  had  been  a  prudent 
counsellor  of  the  general  on  the  march, 
and  it  was  by  his  advice  that  some  of 
its  urgent  difficulties  had  been  over- 
come. He  advised  pack-horses  instead 
of  baggage-wagons,  and  a  rapid  ad- 
vance with  an  unencumbered  portion 
of  the  force  before  the  enemy  at  Fort 
Du  Quesne  could  gain  strength;  but 
Braddock,  a  brave,  confident  officer  of 
the  European  school,  resolutely  ad- 
dicted to  system,  was  unwilling  or  uii- 
able  fully  to  carry  out  the  suggestions. 
Had  Washington  held  the  command, 
it  is  but  little  to  say  that  he  would  not 
have  been  caught  in  an  ambuscade.  It 
was  his  last  advice,  on  arriving  at  the 
scene  on  the  eve  of  the  battle,  that  the 
Virginia  Rangers  should  be  employed 
as  a  scouting  party,  rather  than  the 
regular  troops  in  the  advance.  The 
proposition  was  rejected.  The  next 


day,  though  still  feeble  from  his  ill- 
ness, Washington  mounted  his  horse 
and  took  his  station  as  aid  to  the  gen- 
eral. It  was  a  brilliant  display,  as  the 
well-appointed  army  passed  under  the 
eye  of  its  martinet  commander  on  its 
way  from  the  encampment,  crossing 
and  recrossing  the  Monongahela  to- 
wards Fort  Du  Quesne — and  the  sol- 
dierly eye  of  Washington  is  said  to 
have  kindled  at  the  sight.  The  march 
had  continued  from  sunrise  till  about 
two  o'clock  in  the  afternoon,  when,  as 
the  advanced  column  was  ascending  a 
rising  ground  covered  with  trees,  a  fire 
was  opened  upon  it  from  two  concealed 
ravines  on  either  side.  Then  was  felt 
the  want  of  American  experience  in 
fighting  with  the  Indian.  Braddock 
in  vain  sent  forward  his  men.  They 
would  not,  or  could  not,  fight  against 
a  hidden  foe,  while  they  themselves 
were  presented  in  open  view  to  the 
marksmen.  Washington  recommended 
the  Virginia  example  of  seeking  pro- 
tection from  the  trees,  but  the  general 
would  not  even  then  abandon  his  Eu- 
ropean tactics.  The  regulars  stood  in 
squads  shooting  their  own  companions 
before  them.  The  result  was  an  over- 
whelming defeat,  astounding  when  the 
relative  forces  and  equipment  of  the 
two  parties  is  considered.  Braddock, 
who,  amidst  all  his  faults,  did  not  lack 
courage,  directed  his  men  while  five 
horses  were  killed  under  him.  Wash- 
ington was  also  in  the  thickest  of  the 
danger,  losing  two  horses,  while  his 
clothes  were  pierced  by  four  bullets. 
Many  years  afterwards,  when  he  visited 
the  region  on  a  peaceful  mission,  an 
old  Indian  came  to  see  him  as  a  won- 
der. He  had,  he  said,  levelled  his  rifle 


128 


GEORGE  WASHINGTON. 


so  often  at  him  without  effect,  that  he 
became  persuaded  he  was  under  the 
special  protection  of  the  Great  Spirit, 
and  gave  up  the  attempt.  Braddock 
at  length  fell  in  the  centre  of  the  field 
fatally  wounded.  Nothing  now  re- 
mained but  flight.  But  four  officers 
out  of  eighty-six  were  left  alive  and 
unwounded.  Washington's  first  care 
was  for  the  wounded  general;  his 
next  employment,  to  ride  to  the  reserve 
camp  of  D  unbar,  forty  miles,  for  aid 
and  supplies.  Returning  with  the  re- 
quisite assistance,  he  met  the  wounded 
Braddock  on  the  retreat.  Painfully 
borne  along  the  road,  he  survived  the 
engagement  several  days,  and  reached 
the  Great  Meadows  to  die  and  be 
buried  there  by  the  broken  remnant  of 
his  army.  Washington  read  the  fune- 
ral service,  the  chaplain  being  disabled 
by  a  wound.  Writing  to  his  brother, 
he  attributed  his  own  protection,  "  be- 
yond all  human  probability  or  expect- 
ation," to  the  "all-powerful  dispensa- 
tions of  Providence."  The  natural  and 
pious  sentiment  was  echoed,  shortly 
after,  from  the  pulpit  of  the  excellent 
Samuel  Davies,  in  Hanover  County, 
Virginia.  "  I  may  point,"  said  he,  in 
illustration  of  his  patriotic  purpose  of 
encouraging  new  recruits  for  the  ser- 
vice, in  words  since  that  time  often 
pronounced  prophetic,  "  to  that  heroic 
youth,  Colonel  Washington,  wThom  I 
cannot  but  hope  Providence  has  hither- 
to preserved  in  so  signal  a  manner  for 
some  important  service  to  his  country." 
The  public  attention  of  the  province 
was  now  turned  to  Washington,  as  the 
best  defender  of  the  soil.  His  volun- 
tary service  had  expired,  but  he  was 
still  engaged  as  adjutant,  in  directing 


the  levies  from  his  residence  at  Mount 
Vernon,  whence  the  Legislature  soon 
called  him  to  the. chief  command  of  the 
Virginia  forces.  He  stipulated  for 
thorough  activity  and  discipline  in  the 
whole  service,  and  accepted  the  office. 
The  defence  of  the  country,  exposed  to 
the  fierce  severities  of  savage  warfare, 
was  in  his  hands.  He  set  the  posts  in 
order,  organized  forces,  rallied  recruits, 
and  appealed  earnestly  to  the  Assem- 
bly for  vigorous  means  of  relief.  It 
was  again  a  lesson  for  his  after  life 
when  a  greater  foe  was  to  be  pressing 
our  more  extended  frontiers  under  his 
care,  and  the  reluctance  or  weakness  of 
the  Virginia  Legislature  was  to  be 
reproduced,  in  an  exaggerated  form,  in 
the  imbecility  of  Congress.  We  shall 
thus  behold  Washington,  everywhere 
the  patient  child  of  experience,  unwea- 
riedly  conning  his  lesson,  learning, 
from  actual  life,  the  statesman's  knowl- 
edge of  man  and  affairs.  He  was 
sent  into  this  school  of  the  world  early, 
for  he  was  yet  but  twenty-three,  when 
this  guardianship  of  the  State  was 
placed  upon  his  shoulders. 

We  find  him  again  jealous  of  autho- 
rity in  the  interests  of  the  service.  A 
certain  Captain  Dagworthy,  in  a  small 
command  at  Fort  Cumberland,  refused 
obedience  to  orders,  asserting  his  privi- 
lege as  a  royal  officer  of  the  late  cam- 
paign, and  the  question  was  ultimately 
referred  to  General  Shirley,  the  coin- 
mander-in-chief  at  Boston.  Thither 
Washington  himself  carried  his  appeal, 
making  his  journey  on  horseback  in 
the  midst  of  winter,  and  had  his  view 
of  his  superior  authority  confirmed. 

Returning  immediately  to  Virginia, 
Colonel  Washington  continued  hi  a 


GEORGE  WASHINGTON. 


129 


employment  in  active  military  duties, 
struggling  not  less  with  the  inefficient 
Assembly  at  home,  whom  he  tried  to 
arouse,  than  with  the  enemy  abroad. 
It  was  a  trying  service,  in  which  the 
commander,  spite  of  every  hardship, 
which  he  freely  encountered,  was  sure 
to  meet  the  reproach  of  the  suffering 
public.  The  disinterested  conduct  of 
Washington  proved  no  exception  to 
the  rule.  He  even  experienced  the  in- 
gratitude of  harsh  newspaper  com- 
ments, and  thought  for  the  moment  of 
resignation  ;  but  his  friends,  the  noblest 
spirits  in  the  colony,  reassured  him  of 
their  confidence,  and  he  steadily  went 
on.  The  arrival  of  Lord  Loudoun,  as 
commander-in-chief  of  his  majesty's 
forces,  seemed  to  offer  some  opportu- 
nity for  more  active  operations,  and 
Washington  drew  up  a  memorial  of 
the  affairs  he  had  in  charge  for  his  in- 
struction, and  met  him  in  conference 
at  Philadelphia.  Little,  however,  re- 
sulted from  these  negotiations  for 
the  relief  of  Virginia,  and  Washing- 
ton, exhausted  by  his  labors,  was  com- 
pelled to  seek  retirement  at  Mount 
Vernon,  where  he  lay  for  some  time 
prostrated  by  an  attack  of  fever. 

In  the  next  spring,  of -1758,  he  was 
enabled  to  resume  his  command.  The 
Virginia  troops  took  the  field,  joined 
to  the  forces  of  the  British  general, 
Forbes,  and  the  year,  after  various  dis- 
astrous movements,  which  might  have 
been  better  directed  had  the  counsels 
of  Washington  prevailed,  was  signal- 
ized by  the  capture  of  Fort  Du  Quesne. 
Washington,  with  his  Virginians,  tra- 
versed the  ground  whitened  with  the 
bones  of  his  former  comrades  in  Brad- 
dock's  expedition,  and  with  his  entry 
17 


of  the  fort  closed  the  French  dominion 
on  the  Ohio.  The  war  had  taken 
another  direction,  on  the  Canadian 
frontier  in  New  York,  and  Virginia 
was  left  in  repose. 

Shortly  after  this  event,  in  January, 
1759,  Washington  was  married  to  Mrs. 
Martha  Custis,  of  the  White  House, 
county  of  New  Kent.  This  lady,  born  in 
the  same  year  with  himself,  and  conse- 
quently in  the  full  bloom  of  youthful 
womanhood,  at  twenty-seven,  was  the 
widow  of  a  wealthy  landed  proprietor 
whose  death  had  occurred  three  years 
before.  Her  maiden  name  was  Dan 
dridge,  and  she  was  of  Welsh  descent. 
The  prudence  and  gravity  of  her  dis- 
position eminently  fitted  her  to  be  the 
wife  of  Washington.  She  was  her 
husband's  sole  executrix,  and  managed 
the  complicated  affairs  of  the  estates 
which  he  had  left,  involving  the  raising 
of  crops  and  sale  of  them  in  Europe, 
with  ability.  Her  personal  charms, 
too,  in  these  days  of  her  widowhood, 
are  highly  spoken  of.  The  honeymoon 
was  the  inauguration  of  a  new  and 
pacific  era  of  Washington's  hitherto 
troubled  military  life.  Yet  even  this 
repose  proved  the  introduction  to  new 
public  duties.  With  a  sense  of  the 
obligations  befitting  a  Virginia  gentle- 
man, Washington  had  offered  himself 
to  the  suffrages  of  his  fellow  country 
men  at  Winchester,  and  been  elected 
a  member  of  the  House  of  Burgesses. 
About  the  time  of  his  marriage,  he 
took  his  seat,  when  an  incident  occur- 
red which  has  been  often  narrated. 
The  Speaker,  by  a  vote  of  the  House, 
having  been  directed  to  return  thanks 
to  him  for  his  eminent  military  ser- 
vices, at  once  performed  the  duty  with 


130 


GEOEGE  WASHINGTON. 


wannth  and  eloquence.  "Washington 
rose  to  express  his  thanks,  but,  never 
soluble  before  the  public,  became  too 
embarrassed  to  utter  a  syllable.  "  Sit 
down,  Mr.  Washington,"  was  the 
courteous  relief  of  the  gentleman  who 
had  addressed  him,  "your  modesty 
equals  your  valor,  and  that  surpasses 
the  power  of  any  language  I  possess." 
He  continued  a  member  of  the 
House,  diligently  attending  to  its 
business  till  he  was  called  to  the  work 
of  the  Revolution,  in  this  way  adding 
to  his  experiences  in  war,  familiarity 
with  the  practical  duties  of  a  legislator 
and  statesman. 

Fifteen  years  had  been  quietly 
passed  at  Mount  Vernon,  when  the 
peace  of  provincial  life  began  to  be 
ruffled  by  a  new  agitation.  France 
had  formerly  furnished  the  stirring 
theme  of  opposition  and  resistance 
when  America  poured  out  her  best 
blood  at  the  call  of  British  statesmen, 
and  helped  to  restore  the  falling  great- 
ness of  England.  That  same  parlia- 
ment which  had  been  so  wonderfully 
revived  when  America  seconded  the 
call  of  Chatham,  was  now  to  inflict  an 
insupportable  wound  upon  her  defend- 
ers. The  seeds  of  the  Revolution  must 
be  looked  for  in  the  previous  war  with 
France.  There  and  then  America  be- 
came acquainted  with  her  own  powers, 
and  the  strength  and  weakness  of 
British  soldiers  and  placemen.  To  no 
one  had  the  lesson  been  better  taught 
than  to  Washington.  By  no  one  was  it 
studied  with  more  impartiality.  There 
was  no  faction  in  his  opposition.  The 
traditions  of  his  family,  his  friends,  the 
provinces,  were  all  in  favor  of  allegi- 
ance to  the  British  government.  He 


had  nothing  in  his  composition  of  the 
disorganizing  mind  of  a  mere  political 
agitator,  a  breeder  of  discontent.  The 
interests  of  his  large  landed  estates,  and 
a  revenue  dependent  upon  exports, 
bound  him  to  the  British  nation.  But 
there  was  one  principle  in  his  nature 
stronger  in  its  influence  than  all  these 
material  ties — the  love  of  justice  ;  and 
when  Patrick  Henry  rose  in  the  House 
of  Burgesses,  with  his  eloquent  asser- 
tion of  the  rights  of  the  colony  in  the 
matter  of  taxation,  Washington  was 
there  in  his  seat  to  respond  to  the 
sentiment. 

To  this  memorable  occasion,  on  the 
29th  May,  1765,  has  been  referred  the 
birth  of  that  patriotic  fervor  in  the 
mind  of  Washington,  welcoming  as  it 
was  developed  a  new  order  of  things, 
which  never  rested  till  the  liberties  of 
the  country  were  established  on  the 
firmest  foundations  of  independence 
and  civil  order.  He  took  part  in  the 
local  Virginia  resolutions,  and  on  the 
meeting  of  the  first  Congress,  in  Phila- 
delphia went  up  to  that  honored  body 
with  Patrick  Henry  and  Edmund  Pen- 
dleton.  He  was  at  this  time  a  firm, 
unyielding  maintainer  of  the  rights  in 
controversy,  and  fully  prepared  for  any 
issue  which  might  grow  out  of  them ; 
but  he  was  no  revolutionist — for  it 
was  not  in  the  nature  of  his  mind  to 
consider  a  demand  for  justice  a  provo- 
cative to  war.  Again,  in  Virginia 
after  the  adjournment  of  Congress,  in 
the  important  Convention  at  Rich- 
mond, he  listens  to  the  impetuous  elo- 
quence of  Patrick  Henry.  It  was  this 
body  which  set  on  foot  a  popular  mili 
tary  organization  in  the  colony,  and 
Washington,  who  had  previously  given 


GEORGE  WASHINGTON. 


his  aid  to  the  independent  companies, 
was  a  member  of  the  committee  to  re- 
port the  plan.  A  few  days  later,  he 
writes  to  his  brother,  John  Augustine, 
who  was  employed  in  training  a  com- 
pany, that  he  would  "  very  cheerfully 
accept  the  honor  of  commanding  it,  if 
occasion  require  it  to  be  drawn  out." 

The  second  Continental  Congress,  of 
which  Washington  was  also  a  member, 
met  at  Philadelphia  in  May,  1775,  its 
members  gathering  to  the  deliberations 
with  throbbing  hearts,  the  musketry 
of  Lexington  ringing  in  their  ears. 
The  overtures  of  war  by  the  British 
troops  in  Massachusetts  had  gathered 
a  little  provincial  army  about  Boston ; 
a  national  organization  was  a  measure 
no  longer  of  choice,  but  of  necessity. 
A  commander-in-chief  was  to  be  ap- 
pointed, and  though  the  selection  was 
not  altogether  free  from  local  jealousies, 
the  superior  merit  of  Washington  was 
seconded  by  the  superior  patriotism  of 
the  Congress,  and  on  the  15th  of  June 
he  was  unanimously  elected  by  ballot 
to  the  high  position.  His  modesty  in 
accepting  the  office  was  as  noticeable 
as  his  fitness  for  it.  He  was  not  the 
man  to  flinch  from  any  duty,  because 
it  was  hazardous;  but  it  is  worth 
knowing,  that  we  may  form  a  due  esti- 
mate of  his  character,  that  he  felt  to 
the  quick  the  full  force  of  the  sacrifices 
of  ease  and  happiness  that  he  was 
making,  and  the  new  difficulties  he 
was  inevitably  to  encounter.  He  was 
so  impressed  with  the  probabilities  of 
failure,  and  so  little  disposed  to  vaunt 
his  own  powers,  that  he  begged  gen- 
tlemen in  the  House  to  remember, "  lest 
some  unlucky  event  should  happen  un- 
favorable to  his  reputation,"  that  he 


thought  himself, "  with  the  utmost  sin- 
cerity, unequal  to  the  command  he  was 
honored  with."     With  a  manly  spirit 
of  patriotic  independence,  worthy  the 
highest  eulogy,  he  declared  his  inten- 
tion to  keep  an  exact  account  of  his 
public  expenses,  and  accept  nothing 
more  for  his   services  —  a  resolution 
which  was  faithfully  kept  to  the  let- 
ter.    With  these  disinterested  prelim- 
inaries, he  proceeded   to  Cambridge, 
and  took  command  of  the  army  on  the 
3d  of  July.     Bunker  Hill  had  been 
fought,  establishing  the  valor  of  the 
native  militia,  and  the  leaguer  of  Bos- 
ton was  already  formed,  though  with 
inadequate  forces.     There  was  excel- 
lent individual  material  in  the  men, 
but  everything  was  to  be  done  for  their 
organization  and  equipment.     Above 
all,  there  was   an   absolute  want   of 
powder.     It  was  impossible  to  make- 
any  serious  attempt  upon  the  British 
in  Boston,  but  the  utmost  heroism  was 
shown  in  cutting  off  their  resources 
and  hemming  them  in.      Humble  as 
were   these   inefficient    means   in   the 
present,   the   prospect   of  the   future 
was  darkened  by  the  short  enlistments 
of  the  army,  which  were  made  only  for 
the  year,  Congress  expecting  in  that 
time  a  favorable  answer  to  their  second 
petition  to  the  king.    The  new  recruits 
came  in  slowly,  and  means  were  feebly 
supplied,  but  Washington,  bent  on  ac- 
tion, determined  upon  an  attack.    For 
this  purpose,  he  took  possession  of  and 
fortified  Dorchester  Heights,  and  pre- 
pared to  assail  the  town.     The  British 
were  making  an  attempt  to  dislodge 
him,  which  was  deferred  by  a  storm; 
and  General  Howe,  having  already  re- 
solved to  evacuate  the  city,  a  few  d  aye 


132 


GEORGE  WASHINGTON. 


after,  on  the  17th  of  March,  inglori- 
ously  sailed  away  with  his  troops  to 
Halifax.  The  next  day,  Washington 
entered  the  town  in  triumph.  Thus 
ended  the  first  epoch  of  his  revolution- 
ary campaigns.  There  had  been  little 
opportunity  for  brilliant  action,  but 
great  difficulties  had  been  overcome 
with  a  more  honorable  persistence,  and 
a  substantial  benefit  had  been  gained. 
The  full  extent  of  the  services  of  Wash- 
ington became  known  only  to  his  pos- 
terity, since  it  was  absolutely  neces- 
sary at  the  time  to  conceal  the  difficul- 
ties under  which  he  labored ;  but  the 
country  saw  and  felt  enough  to  extol 
his  fame  and  award  him  an  honest 
meed  of  gratitude.  A  special  vote  of 
Congress  gave  expression  to  the  senti- 
ment, and  a  gold  medal,  bearing  the 
head  of  Washington,  and  on  the  re- 
verse the  legend  Hostibus  primo  fu- 
gatis,  was  ordered  by  that  body  to 
commemorate  the  event. 

We  must  now  follow  the  commander 
rapidly  to  another  scene  of  operations, 
remembering  that  any  detailed  notice, 
however  brief,  of  Washington's  mili- 
tary operations  during  the  war,  would 
expand  this  biographical  sketch  into  a 
historical  volume.  New  York  was  evi- 
dently to  be  the  next  object  of  attack, 
and  thither  Washington  gathered  his 
forces,  and  made  every  available  means 
of  defence  on  land.  By  the  beginning 
of  July,  when  the  Declaration  of  Inde- 
pendence was  received  in  camp,  Gene- 
ral Howe  had  made  his  appearance  in 
the  lower  bay  from  Halifax,  where  he 
was  speedily  joined  by  his  brother, 
Lord  Howe,  the  admiral,  who  came 
bearing  ineffectual  propositions  for  re- 
concilation.  Additional  reinforcements 


to  the  royal  troops  on  Staten  Island 
arrived  from  England ;  a  landing  waa 
made  by  the  well-equipped  army  on 
Long  Island,  and  a  battle  was  immi 
nent.  Washington,  who  had  his  head 
quarters  in  New  York,  made  vigilant 
preparations  around  the  city,  and  at 
the  works  on  Long  Island,  which  had 
been  planned  and  fortified  by  General 
Greene.  This  officer,  unfortunately 
falling  ill,  the  command  fell  to  General 
Putnam,  who  was  particularly  charged 
by  Washington  with  instructions  for 
the  defence  of  the  passes  by  which  the 
enemy  might  approach.  These  were 
neglected,  an  attack  was  made  from 
opposite  sides,  and  in  spite  of  much 
valiant  fighting  on  the  part  of  the  va- 
rious defenders,  who  contended  with 
fearful  odds,  the  day  was  most  disas- 
trous to  the  Americans.  The  slaughter 
was  great  on  this  27th  of  August,  and 
many  prisoners,  including  General  Sul 
livan  and  Lord  Stirling,  were  taken. 
Still  the  main  works  at  Brooklyn,  occu 
pied  by  the  American  troops,  remained, 
though,  exposed  as  they  were  to  the 
enemy's  fleet,  they  were  no  longer  ten- 
able. Washington,  whose  duties  kept 
him  in  the  city  to  be  ready  for  its  de 
fence,  as  soon  as  he  heard  of  the  en 
gagement,  hastened  to  the  spot,  but 
it  was  too  late  to  turn  the  fortunes  of 
the  day.  He  was  compelled  to  witness 
the  disaster,  tradition  tells  us,  not  with- 
out the  deepest  emotion. 

But  it  was  the  glory  of  Washington 
to  save  the  remnant  of  the  army  by  a 
retreat  more  memorable  than  the  vic- 
tory of  General  Clinton.  The  day 
after  the  battle,  and  the  next  were 
passed  without  any  decisive  movements 
on  the  part  of  the  British,  who  were 


GEOPvGE  WASHINGTON. 


133 


about  bringing  up  their  ships,  and  who, 
doubtless,  as  they  had  good  reason, 
considered  their  prey  secure.  On  the 
twenty  -  ninth,  Washington  took  his 
measures  for  the  retreat,  and  so  per- 
fectly were  they  arranged,  that  the 
whole  force  of  nine  thousand,  with  ar- 
tillery, horses,  and  the  entire  equipage 
of  war,  were  borne  off  that  night,  under 
cover  of  the  fog,  to  the  opposite  shore 
in  triumph.  It  was  a  most  masterly 
operation,  planned  and  superintended 
by  Washington  from  the  beginning. 
He  did  not  sleep  or  rest  after  the  bat- 
tle till  it  was  executed,  and  was  among 
the  last  to  cross. 

After  the  battle  of  Long  Island, 
there  had  been  little  but  weariness  and 
disaster,  in  the  movements  of  Wash- 
ington, to  the  end  of  the  year,  when, 
as  the  forces  of  Howe  were  apparently 
closing  in  upon  him  to  open  the  route 
to  Philadelphia,  he  turned  in  very 
despair,  and  by  the  brilliant  affair  at 
Trenton  retarded  the  motions  of  the 
enemy  and  checked  the  growing  de- 
spondency of  his  countrymen.  It  was 
well  planned  and  courageously  under- 
taken. Christmas  night,  of  a  most 
inclement,  wintry  season,  when  the 
river  was  blocked  with  ice,  was  chosen 
to  cross  the  Delaware,  and  attack  the 
British  and  Hessians  on  the  opposite 
side  at  Trenton.  The  expedition  was 
led  by  Washington  in  person,  who 
anxiously  watched  the  slow  process  of 
the  transportation  on  the  river,  which 
lasted  from  sunset  till  near  the  dawn — 
too  long  for  the  contemplated  surprise 
by  night.  A  storm  of  hail  and  snow 
now  set  in,  as  the  general  advanced 
with  his  men,  reaching  the  outposts 
about  eight  o'clock.  A  gallant  onset 


was  made,  in  which  Lieut.  Monroe, 
afterwards  the  President,  was  wounded ; 
Sullivan  and  the  other  officers,  accord 
ing  to  a  previously  arranged  plan, 
seconded  the  movement  from  another 
part  of  the  town ;  the  Hessians  were 
disconcerted,  and  their  general,  E-ahl, 
slain,  when  a  surrender  was  made, 
nearly  a  thousand  prisoners  laying 
down  their  arms.  General  Howe, 
astonished  at  the  event,  sent  out  Corn- 
wallis  in  pursuit,  and  he  had  his  game 
seemingly  secure,  when  Washington, 
in  front  of  him  at  Trenton,  on  the 
same  side  of  the  Delaware,  made  a 
bold  diversion  in  an  attack  on  the 
forces  left  behind  at  Princeton.  It 
was,  like  the  previous  one,  conducted 
by  night,  and,  like  the  other,  was  at- 
tended with  success,  though  it  cost  the 
life  of  the  gallant  Mercer.  After  these 
brilliant  actions  the  little  army  took 
up  its  quarters  at  Morristown  for  the 
winter. 

In  the  spring,  General  Howe  mad* 
some  serious  attempts  at  breaking  up 
the  line  of  Washington  in  New  Jersey, 
but  he  was  foiled,  and  compelled  to 
seek  another  method  of  reaching  Phila- 
delphia. The  withdrawal  of  the  Brit- 
ish troops  would  thus  have  left  a  simple 
course  to  be  pursued  on  the  Delaware, 
had  not  the  attention  of  Washington 
been  called  in  another  direction  by  the 
advance  of  Burgoyne  from  Canada.  It 
was  natural  to  suppose  that  Howe 
would  act  in  concert  with  that  officer 
on  the  Hudson,  nor  was  Washington 
relieved  from  the  dilemma  till  intelli- 
gence reached  him  that  the  British 
general  had  embarked  his  forces,  and 
was  actually  at  the  Capes  of  the  Dela- 
ware. He  then  took  up  a  position  at 


134 


GEOKGE   WASHINGTON. 


Gennantown  for  the  defence  of  Phila- 
delphia. 

Howe,  meanwhile,  the  summer  hav- 
ino-  passed  away  in  these  uncertainties, 
was  slowly  making  his  way  up  the 
Chesapeake  to  the  Head  of  Elk,  to 
gain  access  to  Philadelphia  from  Mary- 
land, and  the  American  army  was  ad- 
vanced to  meet  him.  The  British  troops 
numbered'  about  eighteen  thousand ; 
the  Americans,  perhaps  two-thirds  of 
that  number.  A  stand  was  made  by 
the  latter  at  Chad's  Ford,  on  the  east 
side  of  the  Brandy  wine,  to  which  Kny- 
phausen  was  opposed  on  the  opposite 
bank,  while  Cornwallis,  with  a  large 
division,  took  the  upper  course  of  the 
river,  and  turned  the  flank  of  the  po- 
sition. General  Sullivan  was  intrusted 
with  this  portion  of  the  defence ;  but 
time  was  lost,  in  the  uncertainty  of 
information,  in  meeting  the  movement, 
a.nd  when  the  parties  met,  Cornwallis 
had  greatly  the  advantage.  A  rout 
ensued,  which  was  saved  from  utter 
defeat  by  the  resistance  of  General 
Greene,  who  was  placed  at  an  ad- 
vantageous point.  Lafayette  was 
severely  wounded  in  the  leg  in  the 
course  of  the  conflict.  Washington 
was  not  dismayed  by  the  disaster ;  on 
the  contrary,  he  kept  the  field,  mar- 
shalling and  manoeuvring  through  a 
hostile  country,  one  thousand  of  his 
troops,  as  he  informed  Congress,  actu- 
ally barefoot.  He  would  have  offered 
battle,  but  he  was  without  the  means 
to  resist  effectually  the  occupation  of 
Philadelphia.  A  part  of  the  enemy's 
forces  were  stationed  at  Germantown, 
a  few  miles  from  the  city.  Washing- 
ton, considering  them  in  an  exposed 
situation,  planned  a  surprise.  It  was 


well  arranged,  and  at  the  outset  was 
successful ;  but,  owing  to  the  confusion 
in  the  heavy  fog  of  the  October  morn- 
ing, and  loss  of  strength  and  time  in 
attacking  a  strongly  defended  man- 
sion at  the  entrance  of  the  village, 
what  should  have  been  a  brilliant  vic- 
tory was  changed  into  a  partial  defeat. 
The  encampment  at  Valley  Forge 
succeeded  the  scenes  we  have  describ- 
ed. Half  clad,  wanting  frequently  the 
simplest  clothing,  without  shoes  or 
blankets,  the  army  was  hutted  in  the 
snows  and  ice  of  that  inclement  win- 
ter. Yet  they  had  Washington  with 
them  urging  every  means  for  their 
welfare,  while  his  "  lady,"  as  his  wife 
was  always  called  in  the  army,  came 
from  Mount  Vernon,  as  was  her  custom 
during  these  winter  encampments,  to 
lighten  the  prevailing  despondency. 
Washington,  meanwhile,  was  busy 
with  a  Committee  of  Congress  in  put- 
ting the  army  on  a  better  foundation. 
With  the  return  of  summer  came  the 
evacuation  of  Philadelphia  by  the  Brit- 
ish, who  were  pursuing  their  route 
across  New  Jersey  to  embark  on  the 
waters  of  New  York.  Washington 
with  his  forces  was  watching  their 
movements  from  above.  Shall  he  at- 
tack them  on  their  march  ?  There  was 
a  division  of  opinion  among  his  officers. 
The  equivocal  Charles  Lee,  then  unsus- 
pected, was  opposed  to  the  step ;  but 
Washington,  with  his  best  advisers, 
Greene,  Lafayette,  and  Wayne,  was  in 
favor  of  it.  He  accordingly  sent  La- 
fayette forward,  when  Lee  interposed, 
and  claimed  the  command  of  the  ad- 
vance. Washington  himself  moved  on 
with  the  reserve  towards  the  enemy's 
position  near  Moninouth  Court  House 


GEOEGE  WASHINGTON. 


135 


to  take  part  in  the  fortunes  of  the  day, 
the  28th  of  June.     As  he  was  proceed- 
ing, he  was  met  by  the  intelligence  that 
Lee  was  in  full  retreat,  without  notice 
or  apparent  cause,  endangering  the  or- 
der of  the  rear,  and  threatening  the 
utmost  confusion.     Presently  he  came 
upon  Lee  himself,  and  demanded  from 
him  with  an  emphasis  roused  by  the 
fiercest  indignation — and  the  anger  of 
Washington  when  excited  was  terrific 
— the  cause  of  the  disorder.     Lee  re- 
plied angrily,  and  gave  such  explana- 
tion as  he  could  of  a  superior  force, 
when  Washington,  doubtless  mindful 
of  his  previous  conduct,  answered  him 
with    dissatisfaction,   and   it   is   said, 
on  the  authority  of  Lafayette,  ended 
by  calling  the  retreating  general  "a 
damned   poltroon."*      It  was  a  great 
day  for  the  genius  of  Washington.   He 
made  his  arrangements  on  the  spot  to 
retrieve  the  fortunes  of  the  hour,  and 
so  admirable  were  the  dispositions,  and 
so  well  was  he  seconded  by  the  bravery 
of  officers  and  men,  even  Lee  redeem- 
ing his  character  by  his  valor,  that  at 
the  close  of  that  hot  and  weary  day, 
the  Americans  having  added  greatly  to 
the  glory  of  their  arms,  remained  at 
least  equal  masters  of  the  field.     The 
next   morning  it   was  found  that  Sir 
Henry  Clinton  had  withdrawn  towards 
Sandy  Hook.     The  remainder  of  the 
season  was  passed  by  Washington  on 
the  eastern  borders  of  the  Hudson,  in 
readiness  to  co-operate  with  the  French, 
who  had  now  arrived  under  D'Estaing, 
and  in  watching  the  British  in  New 
York.     In  December  he  took  up  his 
winter  quarters  at  Middlebrook,  in  New 


*  Dawson's 
L  408 


Battles  of  the  United  States. 


Jersey.  The  event  of  the  next  year  in 
the  little  army  of  Washington,  was 
Wayne's  gallant  storming  of  Stony 
Point,  on  the  Hudson,  one  of  the  de- 
fences of  the  Highlands,  which  had 
been  recently  captured  and  manned  by 
Sir  Henry  Clinton.  The  attack  on  the 
night  of  the  15th  July  was  planned  by 
Washington,  and  his  directions  in  his 
instructions  to  Wayne,  models  of  careful 
military  precision,  were  faithfully  car- 
ried out.  Henry  Lee's  spirited  attack 
on  Paulus  Hook,  within  sight  of  New 
York,  followed,  to  cheer  the  encamp- 
ment of  Washington,  who  now  busied 
himself  in  fortifying  West  Point.  Win- 
ter again  finds  the  army  in  quarters  in 
New  Jersey,  this  time  at  Morristown, 
when  the  hardships  and  severities  of 
Valley  Forge  were  even  exceeded  in  the 
distressed  condition  of  the  troops  in 
that  rigorous  season.  The  main  inci- 
dents of  the  war  are  henceforth  at  the 
South. 

The  most  prominent  event  in  the 
personal  career  of  Washington,  of  the 
year  1780,  is  certainly  the  defection  of 
Arnold,  with  its  attendant  execution 
of  Major  Andre.  This  unhappy  trea- 
son was  every  way  calculated  to  enlist 
his  feelings,  but  he  suffered  neither 
hate  nor  sympathy  to  divert  him  from 
the  considerate  path  of  duty.  We  may 
not  pause  over  the  subsequent  events 
of  the  war,  the  renewed  exertions  of 
Congress,  the  severe  contests  in  the 
South,  the  meditated  movement  upon 
New  York  the  following  year,  but  must 
hasten  to  the  sequel  at  Yorktown.  The 
movement  of  the  army  of  Washington 
to  Virginia  was  determined  by  the  ex- 
pected arrival  of  the  French  fleot  in 
that  quarter  from  the  West  Indies 


L36 


GEORGE  WASHINGTON. 


Lafayette  was  already  on  the  spot, 
where  he  had  been  engaged  in  the  de- 
fence of  the  country  from  the  inroads 
of  Arnold  and  Phillips.  Cornwallis 
had  arrived  from  the  South,  and  un- 
suspicious of  any  serious  opposition 
was  entrenching  himself  on  York  River. 
It  was  all  that  could  be  desired,  and 
Washington,  who  had  been  planning 
an  attack  upon  New  York  with  Ro- 
chambeau,  now  suddenly  and  secretly 
directed  his  forces  by  a  rapid  march 
southward.  Extraordinary  exertions 
were  made  to  expedite  the  troops. 
The  timely  arrival  of  Colonel  John 
Lawrens,  from  France,  with  an  instal- 
ment of  the  French  loan  in  specie, 
came  to  the  aid  of  the  liberal  efforts 
of  the  financier  of  the  revolution,  Rob- 
ert Morris.  Lafayette,  with  the  Vir- 
ginians, was  hedging  in  the  fated  Corn- 
wallis. Washington  had  just  left  Phi- 
ladelphia, when  he  heard  the  joyous 
news  of  the  arrival  of  De  Grasse  in  the 
Chesapeake.  He  hastened  on  to  the 
scene  of  action  in  advance  of  the 
troops,  with  De  Rochambeau,  gaining 
time  to  pause  at  Mount  Vernon,  which 
he  had  not  seen  since  the  opening  of 
the  war,  and  enjoy  a  day's  hurried 
hospitality  with  his  French  officers  at 
the  welcome  mansion.  Arrived  at 
Williamsburg,  Washington  urged  on 
the  military  movements  with  the  en- 
ergy of  anticipated  victory.  "Hurry 
on,  then,  my  dear  sir,"  he  wrote  to 
General  Lincoln, "  with  your  troops  on 
the  wings  of  speed."  To  make  the  last 
arrangements  with  the  French  admiral, 
he  visited  him  in  his  ship,  at  the  mouth 
of  James'  River.  Everything  was  to 
be  done  before  succor  could  arrive 
from  the  British  fleet  and  troops  at 


New  York.  The  combined  French 
and  American  forces  closed  in  upor 
Yorktown,  which  was  fortified  by  re- 
doubts and  batteries,  and  on  the  1st 
of  October,  the  place  was  completely 
invested.  The  first  parallel  was  opened 
on  the  6th.  Washington  lighted  the 
first  gun  on  the  9th.  The  storming  of 
two  annoying  redoubts  by  French  and 
American  parties  were  set  down  for 
the  night  of  the  14th.  Hamilton,  at 
the  head  of  the  latter,  gallantly  car- 
ried one  of  the  works  at  the  point  of 
the  bayonet  without  firing  a  shot. 
Washington  watched  the  proceeding  at 
imminent  hazard.  The  redoubts  gain- 
ed were  fortified  and  turned  against 
the  town.  The  second  parallel  was 
ready  to  open  its  fire.  Cornwallis 
vainly  attempted  to  escape  with  his 
forces  across  the  river.  He  received 
no  relief  from  Sir  Henry  Clinton,  at 
New  York,  and  on  the  17th  he  pro- 
posed a  surrender.  On  the  19th,  the 
terms  having  been  dictated  by  Wash- 
ington, the  whole  British  force  laid 
down  their  arms.  It  was  the  virtual 
termination  of  the  war,  the  crowning 
act  of  a  vast  series  of  military  opera- 
tions planned  and  perfected  by  the 
genius  of  Washington. 

In  the  beginning  of  November,  1783, 
when  the  last  arrangements  of  peace 
had  been  perfected,  he  took  leave  of 
the  army  in  an  address  from  head- 
quarters, with  his  accustomed  warmth 
and  emotion,  and  on  the  25th,  entered 
New  York  at  the  head  of  a  military 
and  civic  procession  as  the  British 
evacuated  the  city.  On  the  4th  of 
December,  he  was  escorted  to  the  har- 
bor on  his  way  to  Congress,  at  An- 
napolis, to  resign  his  command,  aftei 


GEOEGE  WASHINGTON. 


137 


a  touching  scene  of  farewell  with  his 
officers  at  Fraunces'  Tavern,  when  the 
great  chieftain  did  not  disdain  the 
sensibility  of  a  tear  and  the  kiss  of 
his  friends.  Arrived  at  Annapolis, 
having  on  the  way  delivered  to  the 
proper  officer  at  Philadelphia  his  ac- 
counts of  his  expenses  during  the  war, 
neatly  written  out  by  his  own  hand, 
on  the  23d  of  the  month  he  restored 
his  commission  to  Congress,  with  a  few 
remarks  of  great  felicity,  in  which  he 
commended  "  the  interests  of  our  dear- 
est country  to  the  protection  of  Al- 
mighty God ;  and  those  who  have  the 
superintendence  of  them  to  His  holy 
keeping." 

At  the  treaty  of  peace  Washington 
was  fifty-one,  and  had  gloriously  dis- 
charged the  duties  of  two  memorable 
eras — the  war  with  France  and  the 
war  with  Great  Britain ;  a  third  ser- 
vice to  his  country  remained,  her  di- 
rection in  the  art  of  government  in 
the  formation  of  the  Constitution. 
Many  ministered  to  that  noble  end, 
but  who  more  anxiously,  more  perse- 
veringly,  than  Washington  ?  His  au- 
thority carried  the  heart  and  intelli- 
gence of  the  country  with  it,  and  most 
appropriately  was  he  placed  at  the 
head  of  the  Convention,  in  1787,  which 
gave  a  government  to  the  scattered 
States  and  made  America  a  nation. 

Once  more  he  was  called  to  listen  to 
the  highest  demands  of  his  country  in 
his  unanimous  election  to  the  presi- 
dency. With  what  emotions,  with 
what  humble  resignation  to  the  voice 
of  duty,  with  how  little  fluttering  of 
vainglory  let  the  modest  entry,  in  his 
diary,  of  the  16th  of  April,  1789,  tell: 
u  About  ten  o'clock,"  he  writes,  "I  bade 
18 


adieu  to  Mount  Vernon,  to  private  life 
and  to  domestic  felicity ;  and  with  a 
mind  oppressed  with  more  anxious  and 
painful  sensations  than  I  have  words 
to  express,  set  out  for  New  York  with 
the  best  disposition  to  render  service 
to  my  country  in  obedience  to  its  call, 
but  with  less  hope  of  answering  its 
expectations."  His  inauguration  took 
place  in  that  city  on  the  30th  of  April. 
Parties  were  soon  at  work  in  the  gov- 
ernment —  the  conservative  and  the 
progressive,  such  as  will  always  arise 
in  human  institutions— represented  in 
the  administration  by  the  rival  states- 
men, Hamilton  and  Jefferson;  but 
Washington  honestly  recognized  no 
guide  but  the  welfare  of  his  country, 
and  the  rising  waves  of  faction  beat 
harmlessly  beneath  his  presidential 
chair.  As  the  close  of  his  second  ad- 
ministration, to  which  he  had  been 
chosen  with  no  dissentient  voice,  ap- 
proached, he  turned  his  thoughts  eager- 
ly to  Mount  Vernon  for  a  few  short 
years  of  repose ;  and  well  had  he  earn- 
ed them  by  his  long  series  of  services 
to  his  country.  He  would  have  been 
welcomed  for  a  third  term,  but  office 
had  no  temptation  to  divert  him  front 
his  settled  resolution.  Yet  he  parted 
fondly  with  the  nation,  and  like  a  pa- 
rent, desired  to  leave  some  legacy  oi 
council  to  his  country.  Accordingly,  he 
published  in  September,  1796,  in  the 
Daily  Advertiser,  in  Philadelphia,  the 
paper  known  as  his  Farewell  Address 
to  the  People  of  the  United  States.  It 
had  long  engaged  his  attention ;  he  had 
planned  it  himself,  and,  careful  of  what 
he  felt  might  be  a  landmark  for  ages, 
had  consulted  Jay,  Madison  and  Ham- 
ilton in  its  composition.  The  spirit 


138 


GEORGE  WASHINGTON. 


and  sentiment,  the  political  wisdom  and 
patriotic  fervor  were  every  whit  his  own. 
Then,  once  again,  Mount  Vernon  re- 
ceived her  son,  destined  never  long 
to  repose  unsolicited  by  his  country. 
France,  pursuing  her  downward  course, 
adopted  an  aggressive  policy  towards 
the  nation,  which  the  most  conciliating 
leference  could  no  longer  support.  A 
state  of  quasi  war  existed,  and  actual 
war  was  imminent.  The  President 
looked  to  Washington  to  organize  the 
army  and  take  the  command,  should  it 
be  brought  into  action,  and  he  accord- 
ingly busied  himself  in  the  necessary 
preparations.  It  was  best,  he  thought, 
to  be  prepared  for  the  worst  while 
looking  for  the  best.  New  negotia- 
tions were  then  opened,  but  he  did  not 
live  to  witness  their  pacific  results.  He 
was  at  his  home  at  Mount  Vernon,  in- 
tent on  public  affairs,  and  making  his 
rounds  in  his  usual  farm  occupations, 
with  a  vigor  and  hardihood  which  had 
abated  little  for  his  years,  when,  on 
the  12th  of  December,  he  suffered 
some  considerable  exposure  from  a 
storm  of  snow  and  rain  which  came 
'•m  while  he  was  out,  and  in  which  he 


continued  his  ride.  It  proved,  the 
next  day,  that  he  had  taken  cold,  but 
he  made  light  of  it,  and  passed  his 
usual  evening  cheerfully  with  the 
family  circle.  He  became  worse  during 
the  night  with  inflammation  of  the 
throat.  He  was  seriously  ill.  Having 
sent  for  his  old  army  surgeon,  Dr. 
Craik,  he  was  bled  by  his  overseer 
and  again  on  the  arrival  of  the  phy 
sician.  All  was  of  no  avail,  and  he 
calmly  prepared  to  die.  "I  am  not 
afraid,"  said  he,  "to  go,"  while  with 
ever  thoughtful  courtesy  he  thanked 
his  friends  and  attendants  for  their 
little  attentions.  Thus  the  day  wore 
away,  till  ten  in  the  night,  when  his 
end  was  fast  approaching.  He  noticed 
the  failing  moments,  his  last  act  being 
to  place  his  hand  upon  his  pulse,  and 
calmly  expired.  It  was  the  14th  of 
December,  1799.  His  remains  were 
interred  in  the  grave  on  the  bank  at 
Mount  Vernon,  in  front  of  his  resi- 
dence, and  there,  in  no  long  time,  ac- 
cording to  her  prediction  at  the  mo- 
ment of  his  death,  his  wife,  Martha, 
whose  miniature  he  always  wore  OD 
his  breast,  was  laid  beside  him. 


MADAME     D'ARBLAY. 


ly/TADAME  D'  ARBLAY,  the  an- 

.iVLthor  of  "  Evelina,"  the  leader  of 
the  modern  school  of  lady  English 
novelists,  was  descended  from  a  family 
which  bore  the  name  of  Macburney, 
and  which,  though  probably  of  Irish 
origin,  had  been  long  settled  in  Shrop- 
shire, England,  and  was  possessed  of 
considerable  estates  in  that  county. 
Unhappily,  many  years  before  her 
birth,  the  Macburneys  began,  as  if  of 
set  purpose  and  in  a  spirit  of  determin- 
ed rivalry,  to  expose  and  ruin  them- 
selves. The  heir  apparent,  Mr.  James 
Macburney,  offended  his  father  by  mak- 
ing a  runaway  match  with  an  actress 
from  Goodman's  Fields.  The  old  gen- 
tleman could  devise  no  more  judicious 
mode  of  wreaking  vengeance  on  his 
undutiful  boy,  than  by  marrying  the 
cook.  The  cook  gave  birth  to  a  son 
named  Joseph,  who  succeeded  to  all 
the  lands  of  the  family,  while  James 
was  cut  off  with  a  shilling.  The  fa- 
vorite son,  however,  was  so  extrava- 
gant, that  he  soon  became  as  poor  as  his 
disinherited  brother.  Both  were  forced 
to  earn  their  bread  by  their  labor.  Jo- 

This  sketch  of  Madame  D'Arblay  is  abridged 
from  an  article  by  Macaulay  in  the  Edinburgh 
Review. 


seph  turned  dancing-master,  and  settled 
in  Norfolk.  James  struck  off  the  Mac 
from  the  beginning  of  his  name,  and 
set  up  as  a  portrait-painter  at  Chester. 
Here  he  had  a  son  named  Charles, 
well  known  as  the  author  of  the  His- 
tory of  Music,  and  as  the  father  of  two 
remarkable  children,  of  a  son  distin- 
guished by  learning,  and  of  a  daugh- 
ter still  more  honorably  distinguished 
by  genius. 

Charles  early  showed  a  taste  for  that 
art,  of  which,  at  a  later  period,  he  be- 
came the  historian.  He  was  appren- 
ticed to  a  celebrated  musician  in  Lon- 
don, and  applied  himself  to  study  with 
vigor  and  success.  He  early  found  a 
kind  and  munificent  patron  in  Fulk 
Greville,  a  high-born  and  high-bred 
man,  who  seems  to  have  had  in  large 
measure  all  the  accomplishments  and 
all  the  follies,  all  the  virtues  and  all  the 
vices  which,  a  hundred  years  ago,  were 
considered  as  making  up  the  character 
of  a  fine  gentleman.  Under  such  pro- 
tection, the  young  artist  had  every 
prospect  of  a  brilliant  career  in  the 
capital.  But  his  health  failed.  It  be 
came  necessary  for  him  to  retreat  from 
the  smoke  and  river  fog  of  London,  to 
the  pure  air  of  the  coast.  He  accepted 

(139) 


140 


MADAME   D'AKBLAY. 


the  place  of  organist  at  Lynn,  and  set- 
tled at  that  town  with  a  young  lady 
who  had  recently  become  hi?  wife. 

At  Lynn,  in  June,  1752,  Frances 
Burney  was  born.  Nothing  in  her 
childhood  indicated  that  she  would, 
while  still  a  young  woman,  have  se- 
cured for  herself  an  honorable  place 
among  English  writers.  She  was  shy 
and  silent.  Her  brothers  and  sisters 
called  her  a  dunce,  and  not  altogether 
without  some  show  of  reason;  for  at 
eight  years  old  she  did  not  know  her 
letters.  In  1760,  Mr.  Burney  quitted 
Lynn  for  London,  and  took  a  house  in 
Poland  street ;  a  situation  which  had 
been  fashionable  in  the  reign  of  Queen 
Anne,  but  which,  since  that  time,  had 
been  deserted  by  most  of  its  wealthy  and 
noble  inhabitants.  He  at  once  obtained 
as  many  pupils  of  the  most  respectable 
description  as  he  had  time  to  attend, 
and  was  thus  enabled  to  support  his 
family,  modestly  indeed,  and  frugally, 
but  in  comfort  and  independence.  His 
professional  merit  obtained  for  him  the 
degree  of  Doctor  of  Music  from  the 
University  of  Oxford  ;  and  his  works 
on  subjects  connected  with  his  art 
gained  for  him  a  place,  respectable, 
though  certainly  not  eminent,  among 
men  of  letters. 

The  progress  of  the  mind  of  Frances 
Burney,  from  her  ninth  to  her  twenty- 
fifth  year,  well  deserves  to  be  recorded. 
When  her  education  had  proceeded  no 
further  than  the  horn-book,  she  lost  her 
mother,  and  thenceforward  she  educa- 
ted herself.  Her  father  appears  to 
have  been  as  bad  a  father  as  a  very 
honest,  affectionate,  and  sweet-tem- 
pered man  can  well  be.  He  loved 
his  daughter  dearly ;  but  it  never 


seems  to  have  occurred  to  him  thai 
a  parent  has  other  duties  to  perform 
to  children  than  that  of  fondling  them 
It  would  indeed  have  been  impossible 
for  him  to  superintend  their  education 
himself.  His  professional  engagements 
occupied  him  all  day.  At  seven  in  the 
morning  he  began  to  attend  his  pupils, 
and,  when  London  was  full,  was  some- 
times employed  in  teaching  till  eleven 
at  night.  He  was  often  forced  to  carry 
in  his  pocket  a  tin  box  of  sandwiches, 
and  a  bottle  of  wine  and  water,  on  which 
he  dined  in  a  hackney-coach  while 
hurrying  from  one  scholar  to  anoth- 
er. Two  of  his  daughters  he  sent  to  a 
seminary  at  Paris;  but  he  imagined 
that  Frances  would  run  some  risk  of 
being  perverted  from  the  Protestant 
faith  if  she  were  educated  in  a  Catho- 
lic country,  and  he  therefore  kept  her 
at  home.  No  governess,  no  teacher  of 
any  art  or  of  any  language,  was  pro- 
vided for  her.  But  one  of  her  sisters 
showed  her  how  to  write ;  and,  before 
she  was  fourteen,  she  began  to  find 
pleasure  in  reading. 

It  was  not,  however,  by  reading  that 
her  intellect  was  formed.  Indeed,  when 
her  best  novels  were  produced,  her 
knowledge  of  books  was  very  small. 
When  at  the  height  of  her  fame,  she 
was  unacquainted  with  the  most  cele- 
brated works  of  Voltaire  and  Moliere ; 
and,  what  seems  still  more  extraordi 
nary,  had  never  heard  or  seen  a  line 
of  Churchill,  who,  when  she  was  a  girl, 
was  the  most  popular  of  living  poets. 
It  is  particularly  deserving  of  observa- 
tion, that  she  appears  to  have  been  by 
no  means  a  novel  reader.  Her  father's 
library  was  large ;  and  he  had  admit- 
ted into  it  so  many  books  which  rigid 


MADAME  D'AKBLAY. 


141 


moralists  generally  exclude,  that  lie  felt 
uneasy,  as  lie  afterwards  owned,  wlien 
Johnson  began  to  examine  the  shelves. 
But  in  the  whole  collection  there  was 
only  a  single  novel,  Fielding's  Amelia. 
An  education,  however,  which  to  most 
girls  would  have  been  useless,  but  which 
suited  Fanny's  mind  better  than  elab- 
orate culture,  was  in  constant  progress 
during  her  passage  from  childhood  to 
womanhood.  The  great  book  of  hu- 
man nature  was  turned  over  before 
her.  Her  father's  social  position  was 
very  peculiar.  He  belonged  in  for- 
tune and  station  to  the  middle  class. 
His  daughters  seem  to  have  been  suf- 
fered to  mix  freely  with  those  whom 
butlers  and  waiting-maids  call  vulgar. 
We  are  told  that  they  were  in  the 
habit  of  playing  with  the  children  of 
a  wig-maker  who  lived  in  the  adjoining 
house.  Yet  few  nobles  could  assemble 
in  the  most  stately  mansions  of  Gros- 
venor  Square  or  St.  James's  Square,  a 
society  so  various  and  so  brilliant  as 
was  sometimes  to  be  found  in  Dr. 
Burney's  cabin. 

With  the  literary  and  fashionable 
society  which  occasionally  met  under 
her  father's  roof,  Frances  can  scarcely 
be  said  to  have  mingled.  She  was  not 
a  musician,  and  could  therefore  bear 
no  part  in  the  concerts.  She  was  shy 
almost  to  awkwardness,  and  scarcely 
ever  joined  in  the  conversation.  The 
slightest  remark  from  a  stranger  dis- 
concerted her;  and  even  the  old  friends 
of  her  father  who  tried  to  draw  her  out 
could  seldom  extract  more  than  a  Yes 
or  a  No.  Her  figure  was  small,  her 
face  not  distinguished  by  beauty.  She 
was  therefore  suffered  to  withdraw 
quietly  to  the  background,  and,  unob- 


served herself,  to  observe  all  that  pass- 
ed. Her  nearest  relations  were  aware 
that  she  had  good  sense,  but  seem  not 
to  have  suspected,  that  under  her  de- 
mure and  bashful  deportment  were 
concealed  a  fertile  invention  and  a 
keen  sense  of  the  ridiculous.  She  had 
not,  it  is  true,  an  eye  for  the  fine  shades 
of  character.  But  every  marked  pecu- 
liarity instantly  caught  her  notice  and 
remained  engraven  on  her  imagination. 
Thus,  while  still  a  girl,  she  had  laid  up 
such  a  store  of  materials  for  fiction  as 
few  of  those  who  mix  much  in  the  world 
are  able  to  accumulate  during  a  long 
life.  She  had  watched  and  listened 
in  her  father's  dwelling  to  people  of 
every  class,  from  princes  and  great 
officers  of  state  down  to  artists  living 
in  garrets,  and  poets  familiar  with 
subterranean  cook  shops.  Hundreds 
of  remarkable  persons  had  passed  in 
review  before  her,  English,  French, 
German,  Italian,  lords  and  fiddlers, 
deans  of  cathedrals  and  managers  of 
theatres,  travelers  leading  about  newly 
caught  savages,  and  singing  women 
escorted  by  deputy-husbands, 

So  strong  was  the  impression  made 
on  the  mind  of  Frances  by  the  society 
which  she  was  in  the  habit  of  seeing 
and  hearing  that  she  began  to  write 
little  fictitious  narratives  as  soon  aa 
she  could  use  her  pen  with  ease,  which, 
as  we  have  said,  was  not  very  early. 
Her  sisters  were  amused  by  her  stories. 
But  Dr.  Burney  knew  nothing  of  their 
existence ;  and  in  another  quarter  her 
literary  propensities  met  with  serious 
discouragement.  When  she  was  fifteen 
her  father  took  a  second  wife.  The  new 
Mrs.  Burney  soon  found  out  that  her 
step-daughter  was  fond  of  scribT  ling, 


i  42 


MADAME  D'AKBLAY. 


and  delivered  several  good-natured  lec- 
tures on  the  subject.  The  advice  no 
doubt  was  well-meant,  and  might  have 
been  given  by  the  most  judicious  friend ; 
for,  at  that  time,  nothing  it  would  ap- 
pear could  be  more  disadvantageous 
to  a  young  lady  than  to  be  known  as 
a  novel-writer.  Frances  with  amiable 
resignation  yielded,  relinquished  her 
favorite  pursuit,  and  made  a  bonfire 
of  all  her  manuscripts. 

She  now  hemmed  and  stitched  from 
breakfast  to  dinner  with  scrupulous 
regularity.  But  the  dinners  of  that 
time  were  early ;  and  the  afternoon 
was  her  own.  Though  she  had  given 
up  novel-writing,  she  was  still  fond  of 
using  her  pen.  She  began  to  keep  a 
diary,  and  she  corresponded  largely 
with  a  person  who  seems  to  have  had 
the  chief  share  in  the  formation  of  her 
mind.  This  was  Samuel  Crisp,  an  old 
friend  of  her  father.  Long  before 
Frances  Burney  was  born,  Mr.  Crisp 
had  made  his  entrance  into  the  world, 
with  every  advantage.  He  was  well 
connected  and  well  educated.  His 
face  and  figure  were  conspicuously 
handsome ;  his  manners  were  polished ; 
his  fortune  was  easy ;  his  character  was 
without  stain  ;  he  lived  in  the  best  so- 
ciety; he  had  read  much; -he  talked 
well.;  his  taste  in  literature,  music, 
painting,  architecture,  sculpture,  was 
held  in  high  esteem.  As  an  adviser  he 
was  inestimable.  Nay,  he  might  pro- 
bably have  held  a  respectable  rank  as 
a  writer,  if  he  would  have  confined 
himself  to  some  department  of  litera- 
ture in  which  nothing  more  than  sense, 
taste,  and  reading  was  required.  Un- 
happily, he  set  his  heart  on  being  a 
great  poet,  wrote  a  tragedy  in  five  acts 


on  the  death  of  Virginia,  and  offered 
it  to  Garrick,  who  was  his  personal 
friend.  Garrick  read,  shook  his  head, 
and  expressed  a  doubt  whether  it 
would  be  wise  in  Mr.  Crisp  to  stake  a 
reputation  which  stood  high  on  the 
success  of  such  a  piece.  But  the  au- 
thor, blinded  by  self-love,  set  in  mo- 
tion a  machinery  such  as  none  could 
long  resist.  His  intercessors  were  the 
most  eloquent  man  and  the  most  lovely 
woman  of  that  generation.  Pitt  was 
induced  to  read  Virginia,  and  to  pro 
nounce  it  excellent.  Lady  Coventry, 
with  fingers  which  might  have  fur- 
nished a  model  to  sculptors,  forced  the 
manuscript  into  the  reluctant  hand  of 
the  manager;  and  in  the  year  1754, 
the  play  was  brought  forward.  Noth- 
ing that  skill  or  friendship  could  do 
was  omitted.  Garrick  wrote  both  pro- 
logue and  epilogue.  The  zealous 
friends  of  the  author  filled  every  box  ; 
and,  by  their  strenuous  exertions,  the 
life  of  the  play  was  prolonged  during 
ten  nights.  But,  though  there  was  no 
clamorous  reprobation,  it  was  univer- 
sally felt  that  the  attempt  had  failed. 
Crisp  lost  his  temper  and  spirits, 
and  became  a  cynic  and  a  hater  of 
mankind.  From  London  he  retired  to 
Hampton,  and  from  Hampton  to  a  soli- 
tary and  long-deserted  mansion,  built 
on  a  common  in  one  of  the  wildest 
tracts  of  Surrey.  No  road,  not  even  a 
sheep-walk,  connected  his  lonely  dwel- 
ling with  the  abodes  of  men.  The 
place  of  his  retreat  was  strictly  con- 
cealed from  his  old  associates.  In  the 
spring  he  sometimes  emerged,  and  was 
seen  at  exhibitions  and  concerts  in 
London.  But  he  soon  disappeared 
and  hid  himself,  with  no  society  but 


MADAME   D' A  RELAY. 


143 


his  books,  in  his  dreary  hermitage. 
He  survived  his  failure  about  thirty 
years. 

Crisp  was  an  old  and  very  intimate 
friend  of  the  Burneys.  To  them  alone 
was  confided  the  name  of  the  desolate 
old  hall  in  which  he  hid  himself  like 
a  wild  beast  in  a  den.  For  them  were 
reserved  such  remains  of  his  humanity 
as  had  survived  the  failure  of  his  play. 
Frances  Burney  he  regarded  as  his 
daughter.  He  called  her  his  Fannikin, 
and  she  in  return  called  him  her  dear 
Daddy.  In  truth,  he  seems  to  have 
done  much  more  than  her  real  father 
for  the  development  of  her  intellect ; 
for  though  he  was  a  bad  poet,  he  was 
a  scholar,  a  thinker,  and  an  excellent 
counsellor.  He  was  practically  fond 
of  Dr.  Burney's  concerts.  They  had, 
indeed,  been  commenced  at  his  sugges- 
tion, and  when  he  visited  London  he 
constantly  attended  them.  But  when 
he  grew  old,  and  when  gout,  brought 
on  partly  by  mental  irritation,  confined 
him  to  his  retreat,  he  was  desirous  of 
having  a  glimpse  of  that  gay  and  bril- 
liant world  from  which  he  was  exiled, 
and  he  pressed  Fannikin  to  send  him 
full  accounts  of  her  father's  evening 
parties.  A  few  of  her  letters  to  him 
have  been  published  ;  and  it  is  impos- 
sible to  read  them  without  discerning 
in  them  all  the  powers  which  after- 
wards produced  Evelina  and  Cecilia, 
the  quickness  in  catching  every  odd 
peculiarity  of  character  and  manner, 
the  skill  in  grouping,  the  humor,  often 
richly  comic,  sometimes  even  farcical. 

Fanny's  propensity  to  novel- writing 
Had  foi  a  time  been  kept  down.  It 
now  rose  up  stronger  than  ever.  The 
heroes  and  heroines  of  the  tales  which 


had  perished  in  the  flames,  were  still 
present  to  the  eye  of  her  mind.  One 
favorite  story,  in  particular,  haunted 
her  imagination.  It  was  about  a  cer- 
tain Caroline  Evelyn,  a  beautiful  dam 
sel  who  made  an  unfortunate  love- 
match,  and  died,  leaving  an  infant 
daughter.  Frances  began  to  image  to 
herself  the  various  scenes,  tragic  and 
comic,  through  which  the  poor  mother- 
less girl,  highly  connected  on  one  side, 
meanly  connected  on  the  other,  might 
have  to  pass.  A  crowd  of  unreal  be- 
ings, good  and  bad,  grave  and  ludi- 
crous, surrounded  the  pretty,  timid, 
young  orphan ;  a  coarse  sea-captain ; 
an  ugly  insolent  fop,  blazing  in  a 
superb  court-dress;  another  fop,  as 
ugly  and  as  insolent,  but  lodged  on 
Snow-Hill,  and  tricked  out  in  second- 
hand finery  for  the  Hampstead  ball; 
an  old  woman,  all  wrinkled  and  rouge, 
flirting  her  fan  with  the  air  of  a  Miss 
of  seventeen,  and  screaming  in  a  dialect 
made  up  of  vulgar  French  and  vulgar 
English ;  a  poet,  lean  and  ragged,  with 
a  broad  Scotch  accent.  By  degrees 
these  shadows  acquired  stronger  and 
stronger'  consistence  :  the  impulse 
which  urged  Frances  to  write  became 
irresistible ;  and  the  result  was  the 
history  of  Evelina. 

Then  came,  naturally  enough,  a  wish, 
mingled  with  many  fears,  to  appear 
before  the  public ;  for,  timid  as  Fran- 
ces was,  and  bashful,  and  altogether 
unaccustomed  to  hear  her  own  praises, 
it  is  clear  that  she  wanted  neither  a 
strong  passion  for  distinction,  nor  a 
just  confidence  in  her  own  powers. 
Her  scheme  was  to  become,  if  possible, 
a  candidate  for  fame  without  running 
any  risk  of  disgrace.  She  had  not 


1-14 


MADAME  D'AEBLAY. 


money  to  bear  the  expense  of  printing. 
It  was  therefore  necessary  that  some 
bookseller  should  be  induced  to  take 
the  risk ;  and  such  a  bookseller  was 
not  readily  found.  Dodsley  refused 
even  to  look  at  the  manuscript  unless 
he  were  trusted  with  the  name  of  the 
author.  A  publisher  in  Fleet  Street, 
named Lowndes,  was  more  complaisant. 
Some  correspondence  took  place  be- 
tween this  person  and  Miss  Burney, 
who  took  the  name  of  Grafton,  and 
desired  that  the  letters  addressed  to 
her  might  be  left  at  the  Orange  Coffee- 
House.  But,  before  the  bargain  was 
finally  struck,  Fanny  thought  it  her 
duty  to  obtain  her  father's  consent. 
She  told  him  that  she  had  written  a 
book,  that  she  wished  to  have  his  per- 
mission to  publish  it  anonymously,  but 
that  she  hoped  that  he  would  not  in- 
sist upon  seeing  it.  What  followed 
may  serve  to  illustrate  what  we  meant 
when  we  said  that  Dr.  Burney  was  as 
bad  a  father  as  so  good-hearted  a  man 
could  possibly  be.  It  never  seems  to 
have  crossed  his  mind  that  Fanny  was 
about  to  take  a  step  on  which  the 
whole  happiness  of  her  life  might  de- 
pend— a  step  which  might  raise  her  to 
an  honorable  eminence,  or  cover  her 
with  ridicule  and  contempt.  Several 
people  had  already  been  trusted,  and 
strict  concealment  was  therefore  not  to 
be  expected.  On  so  grave  an  occasion, 
it  was  surely  his  duty  to  give  his  best 
counsel  to  his  daughter,  to  win  her 
confidence,  to  prevent  her  from  expos- 
ing herself  if  her  book  were  a  bad  one, 
and,  if  it  were  a  good  one,  to  see  that 
the  terms  which  she  made  with  the 
publisher  were  likely  to  be  beneficial 
to  her.  Instead  of  this,  he  only  stared, 


burst  out  a  laughing,  kissed  her,  gave 
her  leave  to  do  as  she  liked,  and  never 
even  asked  the  name  of  her  work. 
The  contract  with  Lowndes  was  speed- 
ily concluded.  Twenty  pounds  wert 
given  for  the  copyright,  and  were  ac- 
cepted by  Fanny  with  delight.  Her 
father's  inexcusable  neglect  of  his 
duty,  happily  caused  her  no  worse  evil 
than  the  loss  of  twelve  or  fifteen  hun- 
dred pounds. 

After  many  delays  Evelina  appeared 
in  January,  1778.  Poor  Fanny  was 
sick  with  terror,  and  durst  hardly  stir 
out  of  doors.  Some  days  passed  be- 
fore anything  was  heard  of  the  book. 
It  had,  indeed,  nothing  but  its  own 
merits  to  push  it  into  public  favor. 
Its  author  was  unknown.  The  house 
by  which  it  was  published,  was  not, 
we  believe,  held  in  high  estimation. 
No  body  of  partizans  had  been  engaged 
to  applaud.  The  better  class  of  read- 
ers expected  little  from  a  novel  about 
a  young  lady's  entrance  into  the  world. 
There  was,  indeed,  at  that  time  a  dis- 
position among  the  most  respectable 
people  to  condemn  novels  generally : 
nor  was  this  disposition  by  any  means 
without  excuse;  for  works  of  that  sort 
were  then  almost  always  silly,  and  very 
frequently  wicked.  Soon,  however, 
the  first  faint  accents  of  praise  began 
to  be  heard.  The  keepers  of  the  cir- 
culating libraries  reported  that  every- 
body was  asking  for  Evelina,  and  that 
some  person  had  guessed  Anstey  to  be 
the  author.  Then  came  a  favorable 
notice  in  the  "  London  Keview ; "  then 
another  still  more  favorable  in  the 
"  Monthly."  And  now  the  book  found 
its  way  to  tables  which  had  seldom 
been  polluted  by  marble-covered  vol 


MADAME   D'AKBLAY. 


145 


umes.  Scholars  and  statesmen,  who 
contemptuously  abandoned  the  crowd 
of  romances  to  Miss  Lydia  Languish 
and  Miss  Sukey  Saunter,  were  not 
ashamed  to  own  that  they  could  not 
tear  themselves  away  from  Evelina. 
Fine  carriages  and  rich  liveries,  not 
often  seen  east  of  Temple  Bar,  were 
attracted  to  the  publisher's  shop  in 
Fleet  Street.  Lowndes  was"  daily 
questioned  about  the  author ;  but  was 
himself  as  much  in  the  dark  as  any  of 
the  questioners.  The  mystery,  how- 
ever, could  not  remain  a  mystery  long. 
It  was  known  to  brothers  and  sisters, 
aunts  and  cousins  :  and  they  were  far 
too  proud  and  too  happy  to  be  dis- 
creet. Dr.  Burney  wept  over  the  book 
in  rapture.  Daddy  Crisp  shook  his 
fist  at  his  Fannikin  in  affectionate  an- 
ger at  not  having  been  admitted  to  her 
confidence.  The  truth  was  whispered 
to  Mrs.  Thrale ;  and  then  it  began  to 
spread  fast. 

The  book  had  been  admired  while 
it  was  ascribed  to  men  of  letters  long 
conversant  with  the  world,  and  accus- 
tomed to  composition.  But  when  it 
was  known  that  a  reserved,  silent 
young  woman  had  produced  the  best 
work  of  fiction  that  had  appeared  since 
the  death  of  Smollett,  the  acclamations 
were  redoubled.  What  she  had  done 
was,  indeed,  extraordinary.  But,  as 
usual,  various  reports  improved  the 
story  till  it  became  miraculous.  Eve- 
lina, it  was  said,  was  the  work  of  a 
girl  of  seventeen.  Incredible  as  this 
tale  was,  it  continued  to  be  repeated 
down  to  our  own  time.  Frances  was 
too  honest  to  confirm  it.  Probably 
she  was  too  much  a  woman  to  contra- 
dict it ;  and  it  was  long  before  any  of 
19 


her  detractors  thought  of  this  mode  of 
annoyance. 

But  we  must  return  to  our  story.  The 
triumph  was  complete.  The  timid  and 
obscure  girl  found  herself  on  the  high- 
est pinnacle  of  fame.  Great  men,  on 
whom  she  had  gazed  at  a  distance 
with  humble  reverence,  addressed  her 
with  admiration,  tempered  by  the  ten- 
derness due  to  her  sex  and  age. 
Burke,  Windham,  Gibbon,  Reynolds. 
Sheridan,  were  among  her  most  ardent 
eulogists.  Cumberland  acknowledged 
her  merit,  after  his  fashion,  by  biting 
his  lips  and  wriggling  in  his  chair 
whenever  her  name  was  mentioned. 
But  it  was  at  Streatham  that  she 
tasted,  in  the  highest  perfection,  the 
sweets  of  flattery,  mingled  with  the 
sweets  of  friendship.  Mrs.  Thrale, 
then  at  the  height  of  prosperity  and 
popularity — with  gay  spirits,  quick 
wit,  showy  though  superficial  acquire- 
ments, pleasing  though  not  refined 
manners,  a  singularly  amiable  temper, 
and  a  loving  heart — felt  towards  Fanny 
as  towards  a  younger  sister.  With  the 
Thrales  Johnson  was  domesticated. 
He  was  an  old  friend  of  Dr.  Burney ; 
but  he  had  probably  taken  little  notice 
of  Dr.  Burney's  daughters,  and  Fanny, 
we  imagine,  had  never  in  her  life  dared 
to  speak  to  him,  unless  to  ask  whether 
he  wanted  a  nineteenth  or  twentieth 
cup  of  tea.  He  was  charmed  by  her 
tale,  and  preferred  it  to  the  novels  of 
Fielding,  to  whom,  indeed,  he  had  al- 
ways been  grossly  unjust.  He  did 
not,  indeed,  carry  his  partiality  so  far 
as  to  place  Evelina  by  the  side  of  Cla- 
rissa and  Sir  Charles  Grandison ;  yet 
he  said  that  his  little  favorite  had  done 
enough  to  have  made  even  Richardson 


MADAMK   D'AKBLAY. 


feel  uneasy.  With  Johnson's  cordial 
approbation  of  the  book  was  mingled 
a  fondness,  half  gallant,  half  paternal, 
for  the  writer ;  and  this  fondness  his 
ao-e  and  character  entitled  him  to  show 

o 

without  restraint.  He  began  by  put- 
ting her  hand  to  his  lips.  But  soon 
he  clasped  her  in  his  huge  arms,  and 
implored  her  to  be  a  good  girl.  She 
was  his  pet,  his  dear  love,  his  dear  lit- 
tle Burney,  his  little  character-monger. 
At  one  time,  he  broke  forth  in  praise 
of  the  good  taste  of  her  caps.  At 
another  time,  he  insisted  on  teaching 
her  Latin.  That,  with  all  his  coarse- 
ness and  irritability,  he  was  a  man  of 
sterling  benevolence,  has  long  been  ac- 
knowledged. But  how  gentle  and  en- 
dearing his  deportment  could  be,  was 
not  known  till  the  Recollections  of 
Madame  D'Arblay  were  published. 

It  would  not  have  been  surprising 
if  such  success  had  turned  even  a  strong 
head,  and  corrupted  even  a  generous 
and  affectionate  nature.  But,  in  the 
Diary,  we  can  find  no  trace  of  any  feel- 
ing inconsistent  with  a  truly  modest 
and  amiable  disposition.  There  is, 
indeed,  abundant  proof  that  Frances 
enjoyed,  with  an  intense,  though  a 
troubled  joy,  the  honors  which  her 
genius  had  won ;  but  it  is  equally 
clear  that  her  happiness  sprang  from 
the  happiness  of  her  father,  her  sister, 
and  her  dear  Daddy  Crisp.  While 
nattered  by  the  great,  the  opulent,  and 
the  learned,  while  followed  along  the 
Steyne  at  Brighton  and  the  Pantiles  at 
Tunbridge  Wells  by  the  gaze  of  ad- 
miring crowds,  her  heart  seems  to  have 
been  stil!  with  the  little  domestic  circle 
in  St.  Martin's  Street.  If  she  recorded 
with  minute  diligence  all  the  compli- 


ments,  delicate  and  coarse,  which  sho 
heard  wherever  she  turned,  she  record 
ed  them  for  the  eyes  of  two  or  three 
persons  who  had  loved  her  from  her 
infancy,  who  had  loved  her  in  obscu- 
rity, and  to  whom  her  fame  ga^e  the 
purest  and  most  exquisite  delight. 
Nothing  can  be  more  unjust  than  to 
confound  these  outpourings  of  a  kind 
heart,  sure  of  perfect  sympathy,  with 
the  egotism  of  a  blue-stocking,  who 
prates  to  all  who  come  near  her  about 
her  own  novel  or  her  own  volume  of 
sonnets. 

It  was  natural  that  the  triumphant 
issue  of  Miss  Burney's  first  venture 
should  tempt  her  to  try  a  second. 
Evelina,  though  it  had  raised  her  fame, 
had  added  nothing  to  her  fortune. 
Some  of  her  friends  urged  her  to  write 
for  the  stage.  Johnson  promised  to 
give  her  his  advice  as  to  the  composi- 
tion. Murphy,  who  was  supposed  to 
understand  the  temper  of  the  pit  as 
well  as  any  man  of  his  time,  undertook 
to  instruct  her  as  to  stage  effect. 
Sheridan  declared  that  he  would  ac 
cept  a  play  from  her  without  even 
reading  it.  Thus  encouraged  she  wrote 
a  comedy  named  The  Witlings.  For- 
tunately it  was  never  acted  or  printed. 
We  can,  we  think,  easily  perceive  from 
the  little  which  is  said  on  the  subject 
in  the  Diary,  that  The  Witlings 
would  have  been  damned,  and  that 
Murphy  and  Sheridan  thought  so, 
though  they  were  too  polite  to  say  so. 
Happily  Frances  had  a  friend  who  waa 
not  afraid  to  give  her  pain.  Crisp, 
wiser  for  her  than  he  had  been  for 
himself,  read  the  manuscript  in  his 
lonely  retreat,  and  manfully  told  her 
that  she  had  failed,  that  to  remove 


MADAME   D'ARBLAY. 


147 


blemishes  here  and  there  would  be 
useless,  that  the  piece  had  abundance 
of  wit  but  no  interest,  that  it  was  bad 
as  a  whole,  that  it  would  remind  every 
reader  of  the  Femmes  $awantes,  which, 
strange  to  say,  she  had  never  read,  and 
that  she  could  not  sustain  so  close  a 
comparison  with  Moliere.  This  opin- 
ion, in  which  Dr.  Burney  concurred, 
was  sent  to  Frances  in  what  she  called 
"  a  hissing,  groaning,  cat-calling  epis- 
tle." But  she  had  too  much  sense  not 
to  know  that  it  was  better  to  be  hissed 
and  cat-called  by  her  Daddy,  than  by 
a  whole  sea  of  heads  in  the  pit  of  Dru- 
ry-Lane  Theatre  ;  and  she  had  too  good 
a  heart  not  to  be  grateful  for  so  rare 
an  act  of  friendship.  She  returned  an 
answer  which  shows  how  well  she 
deserved  to  have  a  judicious,  faithful, 
and  affectionate  adviser.  "  I  intend," 
she  wrote, "  to  console  myself  for  your 
censure,  by  this  greatest  proof  I  hare 
ever  received  of  the  sincerity,  candor, 
and,  let  me  add,  esteem,  of  my  dear 
daddy.  And  as  I  happen  to  love  my- 
self rather  more  than  my  play,  this 
consolation  is  not  a  very  trifling  one. 
This,  however,  seriously  I  do  believe, 
that  when  my  two  daddies  put  their 
heads  together  to  concert  that  hissing, 
groaning,  cat-calling  epistle  they  sent 
me,  they  felt  as  sorry  for  poor  little 
Miss  Bayes  as  she  could  possibly  do 
for  herself.  You  see  I  do  not  attempt 
to  repay  your  frankness  with  the  air 
of  pretended  carelessness.  But,  though 
somewhat  disconcerted  just  now,  I 
will  promise  not  to  let  my  vexation 
live  out  another  day.  Adieu,  my 
dear  daddy !  I  won't  be  mortified, 
and  I  won't  be  downed;  but  I  will  be 
proud  to  find  J  have,  out  of  my  own 


family,  as  well  as  in  it,  a  friend  who 
loves  me  well  enough  to  speak  plain 
truth  to  me." 

Frances  now  turned  from  her  dra- 
matic schemes  to  an  undertaking  fa.i 
better  suited  to  her  talents.  She  de- 
termined to  write  a  new  tale,  on  a  plan 
excellently  contrived  for  the  display 
of  the  powers  in  which  her  superiority 
to  other  writers  lay.  It  was  in  truth 
a  grand  and  various  picture-gallery, 
which  presented  to  the  eye  a  long  se- 
ries of  men  and  women,  each  marked 
by  some  strong  peculiar  feature.  There 
were  avarice  and  prodigality,  the  pride 
of  blood  and  the  pride  of  money,  mor- 
bid restlessness  and  morbid  apathy, 
frivolous  garrulity,  supercilious  silence, 
a  Dernocritus  to  laugh  at  everything, 
and  a  Heraclitus  to  lament  over  every- 
thing. The  work  proceeded  fast,  and 
in  twelve  months  was  completed.  It 
wanted  something  of  the  simplicity 
which  had  been  amongst  the  most  at- 
tractive charms  of  Evelina ;  but  it  fur- 
nished ample  proof  that  the  four  years 
which  had  elapsed  since  Evelina  ap- 
peared, had  not  been  unprofi tably  spent. 
Those  who  saw  Cecilia  in  manuscript 
pronounced  it  the  best  novel  of  the  age 
Mrs.  Thrale  laughed  and  wept  over  it 
Crisp  was  even  vehement  in  applause, 
and  offered  to  insure  the  rapid  and 
complete  success  of  the  book  for  half  a 
crown.  What  Miss  Burney  received 
for  the  copyright  is  not  mentioned  in 
the  Diary ;  but  we  have  observed  seve- 
ral expressions  from  which  we  infer 
that  the  sum  was  considerable.  That 
the  sale  would  be  great  nobody  could 
doubt ;  and  Frances  now  had  shrewd 
and  experienced  advisers,  who  would 
not  suffer  her  to  wrong  herself.  We 


148 


MADAME   D'AKBLAY. 


have  been  told  that  the  publishers  gave 
her  two  thousand  pounds,  and  we  have 
no  doubt  that  they  might  have  given 
a  still  larger  sum  without  being  losers. 
Cecilia  was  published  in  the  summer 
of  1782.  The  curiosity  of  the  town 
was  intense.  We  have  been  informed 
by  persons  who  remember  those  days, 
that  no  romance  of  Sir  Walter  Scott 
was  more  impatiently  awaited,  or  more 
eagerly  snatched  from  the  counters  of 
the  booksellers.  High  as  public  ex- 
pectation was,  it  was  amply  satisfied ; 
and  Cecilia  was  placed,  by  general  ac- 
clamation, among  the  classical  novels 
of  England. 

Miss  Burney  was  now  thirty.  Her 
youth  had  been  singularly  prosperous ; 
but  clouds  soon  began  to  gather  over 
that  clear  and  radiant  dawn.  Events 
deeply  painful  to  a  heart  so  kind  as 
that  of  Frances,  followed  each  other  in 
rapid  succession.  She  was  first  called 
upon  to  attend  the  death-bed  of  her 
best  friend,  Samuel  Crisp.  When  she 
returned  to  St.  Martin's  Street,  after 
performing  this  melancholy  duty,  she 
was  appalled  by  hearing  that  Johnson 
had  been  struck  with  paralysis ;  and, 
not  many  months  later,  she  parted  from 
him  for  the  last  time  with  solemn  ten- 
derness. He  wished  to  look  on  her 
once  more ;  and  on  the  day  before  his 
death  she  long  remained  in  tears  on 
the  stairs  leading  to  his  bed-room,  in 
the  hope  that  she  might  be  called  in 
to  receive  his  blessing.  But  he  was 
then  sinking  fast,  and,  though  he  sent 
her  an  affectionate  message,  was  unable 
to  see  her.  But  this  was  not  the  worst. 
There  are  separations  far  more  cruel 
than  those  which  are  made  by  death. 
Frances  might  weep  with  proud  affec- 


tion for  Crisp  and  Johnson.  She  had 
to  blush  as  well  as  to  weep  for  Mrs 
Thrale.  Life,  however,  still  smiled 
upon  her.  Domestic  happiness,  friend 
ship,  independence,  leisure,  letters,  all 
these  things  were  hers ;  and  she  flung 
them  all  away. 

Among  the  distinguished  persons  to 
whom  Miss  Burney  had  been  intro- 
duced, none  appears  to  have  stood 
higher  in  her  regard  than  Mrs.  Delany. 
This  lady  was  an  interesting  and  ven- 
erable relic  of  a  past  age.  She  wa& 
the  niece  of  George  Granville  Lord 
Lansdowne,  who,  in  his  youth,  ex- 
changed verses  and  compliments  with 
Edmund  Waller,  and  who  was  among 
the  first  to  applaud  the  opening  talents 
of  Pope.  She  had  married  Dr.  Delany, 
a  man  known  to  his  contemporaries  as 
a  profound  scholar  and  an  eloquent 
preacher,  but  remembered  in  our  time 
chiefly  as  one  of  the  small  circle  in 
which  the  fierce  spirit  of  Swift,  tor 
tured  by  disappointed  ambition,  by 
remorse,  and  by  the  approaches  of  mad 
ness,  sought  for  amusement  and  repose. 
Doctor  Delany  had  long  been  dead. 
His  widow,  nobly  descended,  eminent- 
ly accomplished  and  retaining,  in  spite 
of  the  infirmities  of  advanced  age,  the 
vigor  of  her  faculties  and  the  serenity 
of  her  temper,  enjoyed  and  deserved 
the  favor  of  the  royal  family.  She  had 
a  pension  of  three  hundred  a-year ;  and 
a  house  at  Windsor,  belonging  to  the 
crown,  had  been  fitted  up  for  her  ac- 
commodation. At  this  house  the  king 
and  queen  sometimes  called,  and  found 
a  very  natural  pleasure  in  thus  catch- 
ing  an  occasional  glimpse  of  the  pri 
vate  life  of  English  families. 

In  December,  1785,  Miss  Burney  was 


MADAME  D'AKBLAY. 


149 


on  a  visit  to  Mrs.  Delany  at  Windsor. 
The  dinner  was  over.  The  old  lady 
was  taking  a  nap.  Her  grand-niece,  a 
little  girl  of  seven,  was  playing  at  some 
Christmas  game  with  the  visitors,  when 
the  door  opened,  and  a  stout  gentle- 
man entered  unannounced,  with  a  star 
on  his  breast,  and  "  What  ?  what  ? 
what  ? "  in  his  mouth.  A  cry  of  "  The 
king "  was  set  up.  A  general  scam- 
pering followed.  Miss  Burney  owns 
that  she  could  not  have  been  more  ter- 
rified if  she  had  seen  a  ghost.  But  Mrs. 
Delany  came  forward  to  pay  her  duty 
to  her  royal  friend,  and  the  disturbance 
was  quieted.  Frances  was  then  pre- 
sented, and  underwent  a  long  examina- 
tion and  cross-examination  about  all 
that  she  had  written  and  all  that  she 
meant  to  write.  The  queen  soon  made 
her  appearance,  and  his  majesty  repeat- 
ed, for  the  benefit  of  his  consort,  the  in- 
formation which  he  had  extracted  from 
Miss  Burney.  The  good-nature  of  the 
royal  pair  could  not  but  be  delightful 
to  a  young  lady  who  had  been  brought 
up  a  tory.  In  a  few  days  the  visit  was 
repeated.  Miss  Burney  was  more  at 
ease  than  before.  His  majesty,  instead 
of  seeking  for  information,  condescend- 
ed to  impart  it,  and  passed  sentence  on 
many  great  writers,  English  and  for- 
eign. Voltaire  he  pronounced  a  mon- 
ster. Rousseau  he  likedr  ather  better. 
"  But  was  there  ever,"  he  cried,  "  such 
stuff  as  great  part  of  Shakespeare? 
Only  one  must  not  say  so.  But  what 
think  you  ?  What  ?  Is  there  not  sad 
stuff?  What?  What?" 

The  truth  is,  that  Frances  was  fasci- 
nated by  the  condescending  kindness 
of  the  two  great  personages  to  whom 
she  had  been  presented.  Her  father 


was  even  more  infatuated  than  herself. 
A  German  lady  of  the  name  of  Hagger- 
dorn,  one  of  the  keepers  of  the  queen's 
robes,  retired  about  this  time ;  and  her 
majesty  offered  the  vacant  post  to  Miss 
Burney.  When  we  consider  that  Miss 
Burney  was  decidedly  the  most  popu- 
lar writer  of  fictitious  narrative  then 
living,  that  competence,  if  not  opu- 
lence, was  within  her  reach,  and  that 
she  was  more  than  usually  happy  in 
her  domestic  circle,  and  when  we  com- 
pare the  sacrifice  which  she  was  invited 
to  make  with  the  remuneration  which 
was  held  out  to  her,  we  are  divided  be- 
tween laughter  and  indignation.  WTiat 
was  demanded  of  her  was,  that  she 
should  consent  to  be  almost  as  com- 
pletely separated  from  her  family  and 
friends  as  if  she  had  gone  to  Calcutta, 
and  almost  as  close  a  prisoner  as  if  she 
had  been  sent  to  jail  for  a  libel;  that 
with  talents  which  had  instructed  and 
delighted  the  highest  living  minds,  she 
should  now  be  employed  only  in  mix- 
ing snuff  and  sticking  pins;  that  she 
should  be  summoned  by  a  waiting- wo- 
man's bell  to  a  waiting-woman's  duties ; 
that  she  should  pass  her  whole  life  un- 
der the  restraints  of  a  paltry  etiquette, 
should  sometimes  fast  till  she  was  ready 
to  swoon  with  hunger,  should  some- 
times stand  till  her  knees  gave  way 
with  fatigue ;  that  she  should  not  dare 
to  speak  or  move  without  considering 
how  her  mistress  might  like  her  words 
and  gestures.  Instead  of  those  distin 
guished  men  and  women,  the  flower  of 
all  political  parties,  with  whom  she  had 
been  in  the  habit  of  mixing  on  terms 
of  equal  friendship,  she  was  to  have 
for  her  perpetual  companion  the  chief 
keeper  of  the  robes,  an  old  hag  from 


150 


MADAME  D'ARBLAY. 


Germany,  of  mean  understanding,  of 
insolent  manners,  and  of  temper  which, 
naturally  savage,  had  now  been  exas- 
perated by  disease.  Now  and  then, 
indeed,  poor  Frances  might  console  her- 
self for  the  loss  of  Burke' s  and  Wind- 
ham's  society,  by  joining  in  the  "  ce- 
lestial colloquy  sublime"  of  his  ma- 
jesty's equerries. 

And  what  was  the  consideration  for 
which  she  was  to  sell  herself  into  sla- 
very ?  A  peerage  in  her  own  right  ? 
A  pension  of  two  thousand  a-year  for 
life  ?  A  seventy-four  for  her  brother 
in  the  navy  ?  A  deanery  for  her  brother 
in  the  church  ?  Not  so.  The  price  at 
which  she  was  valued  was  her  board, 
her. lodging,  the  attendance  of  a  man- 
servant, and  two  hundred  pounds  a- 
year.  The  man  who,  even  when  hard 
pressed  by  hunger,  sells  his  birthright 
for  a  mess  of  pottage,  is  unwise.  But 
what  shall  we  say  of  him  who  parts 
with  his  birthright,  and  does  not  get 
even  the  pottage  in  return  ?  It  is  not 
necessary  to  inquire  whether  opulence 
be  an  adequate  compensation  for  the 
sacrifice  of  bodily  and  mental  freedom ; 
for  Frances  Burney  paid  for  leave  to 
be  a  prisoner  and  menial.  It  was  evi- 
dently understood  as  one  of  the  terms 
of  her  engagement,  that,  while  she  was 
a  member  of  the  royal  household,  she 
was  not  to  appear  before  the  public  as 
an  author:  and,  even  had  there  been 
no  such  understanding,  her  avocations 
were  such  as  left  her  no  leisure  for  any 
considerable  intellectual  effort. 

It  is  not  strange  indeed  that  an  in- 
vitation to  court  should  have  caused  a 
fluttering  in  the  bosom  of  an  inexperi- 
enced woman.  But  it  was  the  duty  of 
the  parent  to  watch  over  the  child,  and 


to  show  her  that  on  the  one  side  were 
only  infantine  vanities  and  chimerical 
hopes,  on  the  other  liberty,  peace  of 
mind,  affluence,  social  enjoyments,  hon- 
orable distinctions.  Strange  to  say, 
the  only  hesitation  was  on  the  part  of 
Frances.  Dr.  Burney  was  transported 
out  of  himself  with  delight.  Not  such 
are  the  raptures  of  a  Circassian  father 
who  has  sold  his  pretty  daughter  well 
to  a  Turkish  slave-merchant.  Yet  Dr. 
Burney  was  an  amiable  man,  a  man  of 
good  abilities,  a  man  who  had  seen 
much  of  the  world.  But  he  seems  to 
have  thought  that  going  to  court  was 
like  going  to  heaven:  that  to  see 
princes  and  princesses  was  a  kind  of 
beatific  vision;  that  the  exquisite  fe- 
licity enjoyed  by  royal  persons  was 
not  confined  to  themselves,  but  was 
communicated  by  some  mysterious  ef- 
flux or  reflection  to  all  who  were  suf- 
fered to  stand  at  their  toilettes,  or  to 
bear  their  trains.  He  overruled  all 
his  daughter's  objections,  and  himself 
escorted  her  to  her  prison.  The  door 
closed.  The  key  was  turned.  She, 
looking  back  with  tender  regret  on  all 
that  she  had  left,  and  forward  with 
anxiety  and  terror  to  the  new  life  on 
which  she  was  entering,  was  unable  to 
speak  or  stand;  and  he  went  on  his 
way  homeward  rejoicing  in  her  marvel- 
ous prosperity. 

And  now  began  a  slavery  of  five 
years,  of  five  years  taken  from  the  best 
part  of  life,  and  wasted  in  menial 
drudgery  or  in  recreations  duller  than 
even  menial  druggery,  under  galling 
restraints  and  amidst  unfriendly  or  un 
interesting  companions.  The  history 
of  an  ordinary  day  was  this :  Miss  Bur 
ney  had  to  rise  and  dress  herself  early 


MADAME   D'AKBLAY. 


151 


that  she  might  be  ready  to  answer  the 
royal  bell, which  rang  at  half-after  seven. 
Till  about  eight  she  attended  in  the 
queen's  dressing-room,  and  had  the 
honor  of  lacing  her  august  mistress's 
stays,  and  of  putting  on  the  hoop, 
gown,  and  neck-handkerchief.  The 
morning  was  chiefly  spent  in  rumma- 
ging drawers  and  laying  fine  clothes 
in  their  proper  places.  Then  the  queen 
was  to  be  powdered  and  dressed  for 
the  day.  Twice  a  week  her  majesty's 
hair  was  curled  and  craped ;  and  this 
operation  appears  to  have  added  a  full 
hour  to  the  business  of  the  toilette.  It 
was  generally  three  before  Miss  Bur- 
ney  was  at  liberty.  Then  she  had  two 
hours  at  her  own  disposal.  To  these 
hours  we  owe  great  part  of  her  diary. 
At  five  she  had  to  attend  her  colleague, 
Madame  Schwellenberg,  a  hateful  old 
toad-eater,  as  illiterate  as  a  chamber- 
maid, as  proud  as  a  whole  German 
Chapter,  rude,  peevish,  unable  to  bear 
solitude,  unable  to  conduct  herself  with 
common  decency  in  society.  With  this 
delightful  associate  Frances  Burney 
had  to  dine,  and  pass  the  evening.  The 
pair  generally  remained  together  from 
five  to  eleven ;  and  often  had  no  other 
company  the  whole  time,  except  during 
the  hour  from  eight  to  nine,  when  the 
equerries  came  to  tea.  If  poor  Frances 
attemped  to  escape  to  her  own  apart- 
ment, and  to  forget  her  wretchedness 
over  a  book,  the  execrable  old  woman 
railed  and  stormed,  and  complained 
that  she  was  neglected.  Yet,  when 
Frances  stayed,  she  was  constantly  as- 
sailed with  insolent  reproaches.  Lite- 
rary fame  was,  in  the  eyes  of  the  Ger- 
man crone,  a  blemish,  a  proof  that  the 
person  who  enjoyed  it  was  meanly  born, 


and  out  of  the  pale  of  good  society. 
All  her  scanty  stock  of  broken  English 
was  employed  to  express  the  contem|^ 
with  which  she  regarded  the  author  of 
Evelina  and  Cecilia.  Frances  detested 
cards,  and  indeed  knew  nothing  about 
them;  but  she  soon  found  that  the 
least  miserable  way  of  passing  an  even- 
ing with  Madame  Schwellenberg  was 
at  the  card-table,  and  consented,  with 
patient  sadness,  to  give  hours,  which 
might  have  called  forth  the  laughter 
and  the  tears  of  many  generations,  to 
the  king  of  clubs  and  the  knave  of 
spades.  Between  eleven  and  twelve 
the  bell  rang  again.  Miss  Burney  had 
to  pass  twenty  minutes  or  half  an  hour 
in  undressing  the  queen,  and  was  then 
at  liberty  to  retire,  and  dream  that  she 
was  chatting  with  her  brother  by  the 
quiet  hearth  in  St.  Martin's  Street, 
that  she  was  the  centre  of  an  admiring 
assembly  at  Mrs.  Crewe's,  that  Burke 
was  calling  her  the  first  woman  of  the 
age,  or  that  Dilly  was  giving  her  a 
check  for  two  thousand  guineas. 

Now  and  then,  indeed,  events  oc- 
curred which  disturbed  the  wretched 
monotony  of  Frances  Burney's  life. 
The  court  moved  from  Kew  to  Wind- 
sor and  from  Windsor  back  to  Kew. 
One  dull  colonel  went  out  of  waiting 
and  another  dull  colonel  came  into 
waiting.  An  impertinent  servant  made 
a  blunder  about  tea,  and  caused  a  mis- 
understanding between  the  gentlemen 
and  the  ladies.  A  half-witted  French 
Protestant  minister  talked  oddly  about 
conjugal  fidelity.  An  unlucky  mem- 
ber of  the  household  mentioned  a  pas- 
sage in  the  "Morning  Herald"  reflecting 
on  the  queen,  and  forthwith  Madame 
Schwellenberg  began  to  storm  in  bad 


152 


MADAME   D'ARBLAY. 


English,  and  told  him  that  he  made 
her  "  what  you  call  perspire." 

A  more  importance  occurrence  was 
the  royal  visit  to  Oxford.  Miss  Bur- 
ney  went  in  the  queen's  train  to  Nune- 
ham,  was  utterly  neglected  there  in  the 
crowd,  and  could  with  difficulty  find  a 
servant  to  show  the  way  to  her  bed- 
room, or  a  hair-dresser  to  arrange  her 
curls.  She  had  the  honor  of  entering 
Oxford  in  the  last  of  a  long  string  of 
carriages  which  formed  the  royal  pro- 
cession, of  walking  after  the  queen  all 
day  through  refectories  and  chapels, 
and  of  standing,  half-dead  with  fatigue 
and  hunger,  while  her  august  mistress 
was  seated  at  an  excellent  cold  colla- 
tion. At  Magdalene  College,  Frances 
was  left  for  a  moment  in  a  parlor,  where 
she  sank  down  on  a  chair.  A  good-natur- 
ed equerry  saw  that  she  was  exhausted, 
and  shared  with  her  some  apricots  and 
bread,  which  he  had  wisely  put  into 
his  pockets.  At  that  moment  the 
door  opened;  the  queen  entered;  the 
wearied  attendants  sprang  up ;  the 
bread  and  fruit  were  hastily  conceal- 
ed. "I  found,"  says  poor  Miss  Bur- 
ney,  "  that  our  appetites  were  to  be 
supposed  annihilated,  at  the  same 
moment  that  our  strength  was  to  be 
invincible." 

Yet  Oxford,  seen  even  under  such 
disadvantages,  "  revived  in  her,"  to  use 
her  own  words,  "a  consciousness  to 
pleasure  which  had  long  lain  nearly 
dormant."  She  forgot,  during  one  mo- 
ment, that  she  was  a  waiting  maid,  and 
felt  as  a  woman  of  true  genius  might 
be  expected  to  feel  amidst  venerable 
remains  of  antiquity,  beautiful  works 
of  art,  vast  repositories  of  knowledge, 
and  memorials  of  the  illustrious  dead. 


Had  she  still  been  what  she  was  be 
fore  her  father  induced  her  take  the 
most  fatal  step  of  her  life,  we  can  eas- 
ily imagine  what  pleasure  she  would 
have  derived  from  a  visit  to  the  no 
blest  of  English  cities.  She  might,  in 
deed,  have  been  forced  to  travel  back 
in  a  hack-chaise,  and  might  not  have 
worn  so  fine  a  gown  of  Chambery  gauze 
as  that  in  which  she  tottered  after  the 
royal  party;  but  with  what  delight 
would  she  have  then  paced  the  clois- 
ters of  Magdalene,  compared  the  an- 
tique gloom  of  Merton  with  the  splen- 
dor of  Christ  Church,  and  looked  down 
from  the  dome  of  the  Radcliffe  library 
on  the  magnificent  sea  of  turrets  and 
battlements  below !  How  gladly  would 
learned  men  have  laid  aside  for  a  few 
hours  Pindar's  Odes  and  Aristotle's 
Ethics,  to  escort  the  author  of  Cecilia 
from  college  to  college  ?  What  neat 
little  banquets  would  she  have  found 
set  out  in  their  monastic  cells  ?  With 
what  eagerness  would  pictures,  med 
als,  and  illuminated  missals  have  been 
brought  forth  from  the  most  myste- 
rious cabinets  for  her  amusement  ?  How 
much  she  would  have  had  to  hear  and 
to  tell  about  Johnson*  as  she  walked 
over  Pembroke,  and  about  Reynolds 
in  the  ante  chapel  of  New  College? 
But  these  indulgences  were  not  for 
one  who  had  sold  herself  into  bond- 
age. 

The  account  which  she  has  given  of 
the  king's  illness  contains  much  ex- 
cellent narrative  and  description,  and 
will,  we  think,  be  more  valued  by 
the  historians  of  a  future  age  than 
any  equal  portion  of  Pepys'  or  Eve- 
lyn's Diaries.  That  account  shows,  al- 
so, how  affectionate  and  compassionate 


MADAME  D'AKBLAY. 


153 


her  nature  was.  But  it  shows  also, 
we  must  say,  that  her  way  of  life  was 
rapidly  impairing  her  powers  of  rea- 
soning, and  her  sense  of  justice. 

During  more  than  two  years  after 
the  king's  recovery,  Frances  dragged 
on  a  miserable  existence  at  the  palace. 
The  consolations  which  had  for  a  time 
mitigated  the  wretchedness  of  servi- 
tude, were  one  by  one  withdrawn.  Mrs. 
Delany,  whose  society  had  been  a  great 
resource  when  the  court  was  at  Wind- 
sor, was  now  dead.  One  of  the  gen- 
tlemen of  the  royal  establishment,  Col- 
onel Digby,  appears  to  have  been  a  man 
of  sense,  of  taste,  of  some  reading,  and 
of  prepossessing  manners.  Agreeable 
associates  were  scarce  in  the  prison- 
house,  and  he  and  Miss  Burney  were 
therefore  naturally  attached  to  each 
other.  She  owns  that  she  valued  him 
as  a  friend;  and  it  would  not  have 
been  strange  if  his  attentions  had  led 
her  to  entertain  for  him  a  sentiment 
warmer  than  friendship.  He  quitted 
the  court,  and  married  in  a  way  which 
astonished  Miss  Burney  greatly,  and 
which  evidently  wounded  her  feelings, 
and  lowered  him  in  her  esteem.  The 
palace  grew  duller  and  duller;  Mad- 
ame Schwellenberg  became  more  and 
more  savage  and  insolent.  And  now 
the  health  of  poor  Frances  began  to 
give  way;  and  all  who  saw  her  pale 
face,  her  emaciated  figure,  and  her  fee- 
ble walk,  predicted  that  her  sufferings 
would  soon  be  over. 

Frances  uniformly  speaks  of  her  roy- 
al mistress,  and  of  the  princesses,  with 
respect  and  affection.  The  princesses 
seem  to  have  well  deserved  all  the 
praise  which  is  bestowed  on  them  in 
the  Diary.  They  were,  we  doubt  not, 
20 


most  amiable  women.  But  "  the  sweet 
queen,"  as  she  is  constantly  called  in 
these  volumes,  is  not  by  any  means  an 
object  of  admiration  to  us.  She  had 
undoubtedly  sense  enough  to  know 
what  kind  of  deportment  suited  her 
high  station,  and  self-command  enough 
to  maintain  that  deportment  invaria- 
bly. She  was,  in  her  intercourse  with 
Miss  Burney,  generally  gracious  and 
affable,  sometimes,  when  displeased, 
cold  and  reserved,  but  never,  under 
any  circumstances,  rude,  peevish  or 
violent.  She  knew  how  to  dispense, 
gracefully  and  skilfully,  those  little 
civilities  which,  when  paid  by  a  sover- 
eign, are  prized  at  many  times  their 
intrinsic  value  ;  how  to  pay  a  compli- 
ment; how  to  lend  a  book;  how  to 
ask  after  a  relation.  But  she  seems  to 
have  been  utterly,  regardless  of  the 
comfort,  the  health,  the  life  of  her  at- 
tendants, when  her  own  convenience 
was  concerned.  Weak,  feverish,  hard- 
ly able  to  stand,  Frances  had  still  to 
rise  before  seven,  in  order  to  dress  the 
sweet  queen,  and  to  sit  up  till  mid- 
night in  order  to  undress  the  sweet 
queen.  The  indisposition  of  the  nand- 
maid  could  not,  and  did  not,  escape  the 
notice  of  her  royal  mistress.  But  the 
established  doctrine  of  the  court  was, 
that  all  sickness  was  to  be  considered 
as  a  pretence  until  it  proved  fatal.  The 
only  way  in  which  the  invalid  could 
clear  herself  from  the  suspicion  of  ma- 
lingering, as  it  is  called  in  the  army 
was  to  go  on  lacing  and  unlacing,  till 
she  dropped  down  dead  at  the  royal 
feet.  "  This,"  Miss  Burney  wrote,  when 
she  was  suffering  cruelly  from  sickness, 
watching,  and  labor,  "  is  by  no  means 
from  hardness  of  heart ;  far  otherwise. 


154 


MADAME   D'AKBLAY. 


There  is  no  hardness  of  heart  in  any 
one  of  them ;  but  it  is  prejudice,  and 
want  of  personal  experience." 

Many  strangers  sympathized  with 
the  bodily  and  mental  sufferings  of 
this  distinguished  woman.  All  who 
saw  her,  saw  that  her  frame  was  sink- 
ing, that  her  heart  was  breaking.  The 
last,  it  should  seem,  to  observe  the 
change  was  her  father.  At  length,  in 
epite  of  himself,  his  eyes  were  opened. 
In  May,  1790,  his  daughter  had  an  in- 
terview of  three  hours  with  him,  the 
only  long  interview  which  they  had 
had  since  he  took  her  to  Windsor  in 
1786.  She  told  him  that  she  was 
miserable,  that  she  was  worn  with  at- 
tendance and  want  of  sleep,  that  she 
had  no  comfort  in  life,  nothing  to  love, 
nothing  to  hope,  that  her  family  and 
friends  were  to  her  as  though  they 
were  not,  and  were  remembered  by  her 
as  men  remember  the  dead.  From  day- 
break to  midnight  the  same  killing 
labor,  the  same  recreations,  more  hate- 
ful than  labor  itself,  followed  each 
other  without  variety,  without  any  in- 
terval of  liberty  and  repose. 

The  Doctor  was  greatly  dejected  by 
this  news ;  but  was  too  good-natured  a 
man  not -to  say  that,  if  she  wished  to 
resign,  his  house  and  arms  were  open  to 
her.  Still,  however,  he  could  not  bear 
to  remove  her  from  the  court.  His 
veneration  for  royalty  amounted,  in 
truth  to  idolatry.  It  can  be  compared 
only  to  the  grovelling  superstition  of 
those  Syrian  devotees,  who  made  their 
children  pass  through  the  fire  to  Mo- 
loch. When  he  induced  his  daughter 
to  accept  the  place  of  keeper  of  the 
robes,  he  entertained,  as  she  tells  us, 
%  hope  that  some  worldly  advantage 


or  other,  not  set  down  in  the  contract 
of  service,  would  be  the  result  of  her 
connection  with  the  court.     What  ad- 
vantage he  expected  we  do  not  know, 
nor   did   he   probably  know  himself. 
But,  whatever  he  expected,  he  certain- 
ly got  nothing.    Miss  Burney  had  been 
hired  for  board,  lodging,  and  two  hun- 
dred a-year.     Board,  lodging,  and  two 
hundred  a-year,  she  had  only  received. 
We  have  looked  carefully  through  the 
diary,  in   the   hope   of  finding   some 
trace  of  those  extraordinary  benefac- 
tions on  which  the  Doctor  reckoned 
But  we  can  discover  only  a  promise, 
never  performed,  of  a  gown;  and  for 
this  promise  Miss  Burney  was  expected 
to  return  thanks,  such  as  might  have 
suited  the  beggar  with  whom  St.  Mar- 
tin, in  the  legend,  divided  his  cloak. 
The  experience  of  four  years  was,  how- 
ever, insufficient  to  dispel  the  illusion 
which  had  taken  possession  of  the  Doc- 
tor's  mind;    and,   between    the   dear 
father   and    the   sweet   queen,    there 
seemed  to  be  little  doubt  that  some 
day  or  other  Frances  would  drop  down 
a  corpse.      Six   months   had   elapsed 
since  the  interview  between  the  parent 
and   the  daughter.      The   resignation 
was  not  sent  in.     The  sufferer  grew 
worse  and  worse.    She  took  bark ;  but 
it  soon  ceased  to  produce  a  beneficial 
effect.     She  was  stimulated  with  wine ; 
she  was  soothed  with  opium;  but  in 
vain.     Her  breath  began  to  fail.     The 
whisper  that   she   was    in   a   decline 
spread  through  the  court.     The  pains 
in  her  side  became  so  severe  that  she 
was  forced  to  crawl  from  the  card-table 
of  the  old  fury  to  whom  she  was  teth- 
tred,  three  or  four  times  in  an  evening 
for  the  purpose  of  taking  hartshorn 


MADAME   D'AEBLAY. 


155 


Elad  she  been  a  negro  slave,  a  humane 
planter  would  have  excused  her  from 
work.  But  her  majesty  showed  no 
mercy.  Thrice  a  day  the  accursed  bell 
still  rang ;  the  queen  was  still  to  be 
dressed  for  the  morning  at  seven,  and 
to  be  dressed  for  the  day  at  noon,  and 
to  be  undressed  at  eleven  at  night. 

But  there  had  arisen,  in  literary  and 
fashionable  society,  a  general  feeling 
of  compassion  for  Miss  Burney,  and  of 
indignation  against  both  her  father 
and  the  queen.  "  Is  it  possible,"  said 
a  great  French  lady  to  the  Doctor, 
"  that  your  daughter  is  in  a  situation 
where  she  is  never  allowed  a  holiday  ? " 
Horace  Walpole  wrote  to  Frances  to 
express  his  sympathy.  Boswell,  boil- 
ing over  with  good-natured  rage,  al- 
most forced  an  entrance  into  the  palace 
to  see  her.  "  My  dear  ma'am,  why  do 
you  stay?  It  won't  do,  ma'am;  you 
must  resign.  We  can  put  up  with  it 
no  longer.  Some  very  violent  measures, 
I  assure  you,  will  be  taken.  We  shall 
address  Dr.  Burney  in  a  body."  Burke 
and  Reynolds,  though  less  noisy,  were 
zealous  in  the  same  cause.  Windham 
spoke  to  Dr.  Burney ;  but  found  him 
still  irresolute.  "  I  will  set  the  Lite- 
rary Club  upon  him,"  cried  Windham ; 
"  Miss  Burney  has  some  very  true  ad- 
mirers there,  and  I  am  sure  they  will 
eagerly  assist."  Indeed  the  Burney 
family  seem  to  have  been  apprehensive 
that  some  public  affront,  such  as  the 
Doctor's  unpardonable  folly,  to  use 
the  mildest  term,  had  richly  deserved, 
would  be  put  upon  him.  The  medical 
men  spoke  out,  and  plainly  told  him 
that  his  daughter  must  resign  or  die. 

At  last,  paternal  affection,  medical 
authority,  and  the  voice  of  all  London 


crying  shame,  triumphed  over  Dr.  Bur- 
ney's  love  of  courts.  He  determined 
that  Frances  should  write  a  letter  of 
resignation.  It  was  with  difficulty 
that,  though  her  life  was  at  stake,  she 
mustered  spirit  to  put  the  paper  into 
the  queen's  hands.  "  I  could  not,"  so 
runs  the  diary,  "  summon  courage  to 
present  my  memorial — my  heart  always 
failed  me  from  seeing  the  queen's  en- 
tire freedom  from  such  an  expectation. 
For,  though  I  was  frequently  so  ill  in 
her  presence  that  I  could  hardly  stand, 
I  saw  she  concluded  me,  while  life  re- 
mained, inevitably  hers." 
.  At  last,  with  a  trembling  hand  the 
paper  was  delivered.  Then  came  the 
storm.  Juno,  as  in  the  ^Eneid,  dele- 
gated the  work  of  vengeance  to  Alecto. 
The  queen  was  calm  and  gentle;  but 
Madame  Schwellenberg  raved  like  a 
maniac  in  the  incurable  ward  of  Bed- 
lam. Such  insolence  !  Such  ingrati- 
tude !  Such  folly !  Would  Miss  Bur- 
ney bring  utter  destruction  on  herself 
and  her  family?  Would  she  throw 
away  the  inestimable  advantage  of 
royal  protection?  Would  she  part 
with  the  privileges  which,  once  relin- 
quished, could  never  be  regained  ?  It 
was  idle  to  talk  of  health  and  life.  If 
people  could  not  live  in  the  palace,  the 
best  thing  that  could  befall  them  was 
to  die  in  it.  The  resignation  was  not 
accepted.  The  language  of  the  medi- 
cal men  became  stronger  and  stronger. 
Doctor  Burney's  parental  fears  were 
fully  roused;  and  he  explicitly  de- 
clared, in  a  letter  meant  to  be  shown 
to  the  queen,  that  his  daughter  must 
retire.  The  Schwellenberg  raved  like 
a  wild-cat.  "  A  scene  almost  horrible 
ensued,"  says  Miss  Burney,  "She  was 


156 


MADAME  D'AKBLAY. 


too  much  enraged  for  disguise,  and  ut- 
tered the  most  furious  expressions  of 
indignant  contempt  at  our  proceedings. 
I  am  sure  she  would  gladly  have  con- 
fined us  both  in  the  Bastile,  had  Eng- 
land such  a  misery,  as  a  fit  place  to 
bring  us  to  ourselves,  from  a  daring  so 
outrageous  against  imperial  wishes." 
This  passage  deserves  notice,  as  being 
the  only  one  in  the  diary,  as  far  as  we 
have  observed,  which  shows  Miss  Bur- 
ney  to  have  been  aware  that  she  was  a 
native  of  a  free  country,  that  she  could 
not  be  pressed  for  a  waiting-maid 
against  her  will,  and  that  she  had  just 
as  good  a  right  to  live,  if  she  chose,  in 
St.  Martin's  Street,  as  Queen  Charlotte 
had  to  live  at  St.  James'. 

The  queen  promised  that,  after  the 
next  birth-day,  Miss  Burney  should  be 
set  at  liberty.  But  the  promise  was 
ill  kept ;  and  her  majesty  showed 
displeasure  at  being  reminded  of  it. 
At  length  Frances  was  informed 
that  in  a  fortnight  her  attendance 
should  cease.  "  I  heard  this, "  she  says, 
"  with  a  fearful  presentiment  I  should 
surely  never  go  through  another  fort- 
night, in  so  weak  and  languishing  and 
painful  a  state  of  health.  .  .  As 
the  time  approached,  the  queen's  cor. 
diality  rather  diminished,  and  traces 
of  internal  displeasure  appeared  some- 
times, arising  from  an  opinion  I  ought 
rather  to  have  struggled  on,  live  or  die, 
than  to  quit  her.  Yet  I  am  sure  she 
saw  how  poor  was  my  own  chance 
except  by  a  change  in  the  mode  of 
life,  and  at  least  ceased  to  wonder, 
though  she  could  not  approve."  Sweet 
queen !  What  noble  candor,  to  ad- 
mit that  the  undutifulness  of  people 
who  did  not  think  the  honor  of  ad- 


justing her  tuckers  worth  the  sacrificf 
of  their  own  lives,  was,  though  highly 
criminal,  not  altogether  unnatural ! 

We  perfectly  understand  her  ma- 
jesty's contempt  for  the  lives  of  others 
where  her  own  pleasure  was  concerned. 
But  what  pleasure  she  can  have  found 
in  having  Miss  Burney  about  her,  it 
is  not  so  easy  to  comprehend.  That 
Miss  Burney  was  an  eminently  skilful 
keeper  of  the  robes  is  not  very  prob 
able.  Few  women,  indeed,  had  paid 
less  attention  to  dress.  Now  and  then 
in  the  course  of  five  years,  she  had 
been  asked  to  read  aloud  or  to  write  a 
copy  of  verses.  But  better  readers 
might  easily  have  been  found;  and 
her  verses  were  worse  than  even  the 
Poet-Laureate's  Birth-day  Odes.  Per- 
haps that  economy  which  was  among 
her  majesty's  most  conspicuous  virtues, 
had  something  to  do  with  her  conduct 
on  this  occasion.  Miss  Burney  had 
never  hinted  that  she  expected  a  re- 
tiring pension;  and  indeed  would 
gladly  have  given  the  little  that  she 
had  for  freedom.  But  her  majesty 
knew  what  the  public  thought,  and 
what  became  her  dignity.  She  could 
not  for  very  shame  suffer  a  woman  of 
distinguished  genius,  who  had  quitted 
a  lucrative  career  to  wait  on  her,  who 
had  served  her  faithfully  for  a  pit- 
tance during  five  years,  and  whose 
constitution  had  been  impaired  by  la- 
bor and  watching,  to  leave  the  court 
without  some  mark  of  royal  liberality. 
George  the  Third,  who.  on  all  occa- 

O  ' 

sions  where  Miss  Burney  was  concern- 
ed, seems  to  have  behaved  like  an 
honest  good-natured  gentleman,  felt 
this,  and  said  plainly  that  she  was  en- 
titled to  a  provision.  At  length,  in  re 


MADAME   D'ABBLAY. 


157 


turn  for  all  the  misery  which  she  had 
undergone,  and  for  the  health  which 
she  had  sacrificed,  an  annuity  of  one 
hundred  pounds  was  granted  to  her, 
dependent  on  the  queen's  pleasure. 

Then  the  prison  was  opened,  and 
Frances  was  free  once  more.  Johnson, 
as  Burke  observed,  might  have  added 
a  striking  page  to  his  poem  on  the 
Vanity  of  Human  Wishes,  if  he  had 
lived  to  see  his  little  Burney  as  she 
went  into  the  palace  and  as  she  came 
out  of  it. 

The  pleasures,  so  long  untasted,  of 
liberty,  of  friendship,  of  domestic  af- 
fection, were  almost  too  acute  for  her 
shattered  frame.  But  happy  days  and 
tranquil  nights  soon  restored  the 
health  which  the  queen's  toilette  and 
Madame  Schwellenberg's  card-table 
had  impaired.  Kind  and  anxious  faces 
surrounded  the  invalid.  Conversation 
the  most  polished  and  brilliant  revived 
her  spirits.  Traveling  was  recom- 
mended to  her ;  and  she  rambled  by 
easy  journeys  from  cathedral  to  cathe- 
dral, and  from  watering-place  to  wa- 
tering-place. She  crossed  the  New 
Forest,  and  visited  Stonehenge  and 
Wilton,  the  cliffs  of  Lyme,  and  the 
beautiful  valley  of  Sidmouth.  Thence 
she  journeyed  by  Powderham  Castle, 
and  by  the  ruins  of  Glastonbury  Ab- 
bey, to  Bath,  and  from  Bath,  when  the 
winter  was  approaching,  returned  well 
and  cheerful  to  London.  There  she 
visited  her  old  dungeon,  and  found 
her  successor  already  far  on  the  way 
to  the  grave,  and  kept  to  strict  duty, 
from  morning  till  midnight,  with  a 
sprained  ankle  and  a  nervous  fever. 

At  this  time  England  swarmed  with 
French  exiles  driven  from  their  coun- 


try by  the  revolution.  A  colony  of 
these  refugees  settled  at  Juniper  Hall, 
in  Surrey,  not  far  from  Norbury  Park, 
where,  Mr.  Lock,  an  intimate  friend 
of  the  Burney  family,  resided,  Frances 
visited  Norbury,  and  was  introduced 
to  the  strangers.  She  had  strong  pre- 
judices against  them;  for  her  toryism 
was  far  beyond,  we  do  not  say  that  of 
Mr.  Pitt,  but  that  of  Mr.  Eeeves ;  and 
the  inmates  of  Juniper  Hall  were  all 
attached  to  the  constitution  of  1791, 
and  were  therefore  more  detested  by 
the  royalists  of  the  first  emigration 
than  Petion  or  Marat.  But  such  a  wo- 
man as  Miss  Burney  could  not  long  re- 
sist the  fascination  of  that  remarkable 
society.  She  had  lived  with  Johnson 
and  Windham,  with  Mrs.  Montagu  and 
Mrs.  Thrale.  Yet  she  was  forced  to 
own  that  she  had  never  heard  conver- 
sation before.  The  most  animated  elo- 
quence, the  keenest  observation,  the 
most  sparkling  wit,  the  most  courtly 
grace,  were  united  to  charm  her.  For 
Madame  de  Stae'l  was  there,  and  M.  de 
Talleyrand.  There  too  was  M.  de  Nar- 
bonne,  a  noble  representative  of  French 
aristocracy ;  and  with  M.  de  Narbonne 
was  his  friend  and  follower  General 
D'Arblay,  an  honorable  and  amiable 
man,  with  a  handsome  person,  frank, 
soldier-like  manners,  and  some  taste 
for  letters. 

The  prejudices  which  Frances  had 
conceived  against  the  constitutional 
royalists  of  France  rapidly  vanished. 
She  listened  with  rapture  to  Talley 
rand  and  Madame  de  Stae'l,  joined  with 
M.  D'Arblay  in  execrating  the  Jaco- 
bins, and  in  weeping  for  the  unhappy 
Bourbons,  took  French  lessons  from 
him,  fell  in  love  with  him,  and  raar 


158 


MADAME   D'AEBLAY. 


ried  him  on  no  better  provision  than 
a  precarious  annuity  o'f  one  hundred 
pounds. 

M.  D'Arblay's  fortune  had  perished 
in  the  general  wreck  of  the  French 
Revolution ;  and  in  a  foreign  country 
his  talents,  whatever  they  may  have 
been,  could  scarcely  make  him  rich. 
The  task  of  providing  for  the  fam- 
ily devolved  on  his  wife.  In  the 
year  1796,  she  published  by  subscrip- 
tion her  third  novel,  Camilla.  It  was 
impatiently  expected  by  the  public; 
and  the  sum  which  she  obtained  by  it 
was,  we  believe,  greater  than  had  at 
that  time  been  received  for  a  novel. 
Camilla,  however,  never  attained  pop- 
ularity like  that  which  Evelina  and 
Cecilia  had  enjoyed ;  and  it  must  be 
allowed  that  there  was  a  perceptible 
falling  off,  not  indeed  in  humor,  or  in 
power  of  portraying  character,  but  in 
grace  and  in  purity  of  style. 

During  the  short  time  which  follow- 
ed the  treaty  of  Amiens,  M.  D'Arblay 
visited  France.  Lauriston  and  Lafay- 
ette represented  his  claims  to  the 
French  government,  and  obtained  a 
promise  that  he  should  be  reinstated 
in  his  military  rank.  M.  D'Arblay, 
however,  insisted  that  he  should  never 
be  required  to  serve  against  the  coun- 
trymen of  his  wife.  The  first  consul,  of 
course,  could  not  hear  of  such  a  condi- 
tion; and  ordered  the  general's  com- 
mission to  be  instantly  revoked. 

Madame  D'Arblay  joined  her  hus- 
band at  Paris  a  short  time  before  the 
war  of  1803  broke  out;  and  remained 


in  France  ten  years,  cut  off  from  almost 
all  intercourse  with  the  land  of  her 
birth.  At  length,  when  Napoleon  was 
on  his  march  to  Moscow,  she  with  great 
difficulty  obtained  from  his  ministers 
permission  to  visit  her  own  country, 
in  company  with  her  son,  who  was  a 
native  of  England.  She  returned  in 
time  to  receive  the  last  blessing  of  her 
father,  who  died  in  his  eighty-seventh 
year.  In  1814  she  published  her  last 
novel,  the  Wanderer,  a  book  which  no 
judicious  friend  to  her  memory  will  at- 
tempt to  draw  from  the  oblivion  into 
which  it  has  justly  fallen.  In  the  same 
year  her  son  Alexander  was  sent  to 
Cambridge.  He  obtained  an  honorable 
place  among  the  wranglers  of  his  year, 
and  was  elected  a  fellow  of  Christ's 
College.  But  his  reputation  at  the 
University  was  higher  than  might  be 
inferred  from  his  success  in  academical 
contests.  His  French  education  had 
not  fitted  him  for  the  examinations  of 
the  Senate-House ;  but  in  pure  mathe- 
matics, we  have  been  assured  by  some 
of  his  competitors  that  he  had  very 
few  equals.  He  went  into  the  church 
and  it  was  thought  likely  that  he 
would  attain  high  eminence  as  a 
preacher ;  but  he  died .  before  his 
mother.  All  that  we  have  heard  of 
him  leads  us  to  believe,  that  he  was 
such  a  son  as  such  a  mother  deserved 
to  have.  In  1832,  Madame  D'Arblay 
published  the  "  Memoirs  of  her  Fa- 
ther;" and,  on  the  6th  of  January, 
1840,  she  died  in  her  eighty-eighth 
year 


EDMUND     BURKE. 


C1  ETTING  aside  the  suggestion  of  a 
^^^^ 

kJ  descent  from  the  noble  Norman 
family  of  De  Burgh,  which  settled  in 
Ireland  in  the  reign  of  Henry  the 
Second,  as  unsupported  by  any  satis- 
factory evidence,  the  family  of  Edmund 
Burke  may  be  traced  to  a  mayor  of 
the  city  of  Limerick  of  some  historic 
reputation  in  the  troublous  scenes  of 
the  parliamentary  contest  with  Charles 
the  First.  This  was  the  great  grand- 
father of  Edmund.  He  was  on  the 
royal  side  in  the  struggle  and  conse- 
quently suffered  in  fortune.  His 
grandson  Richard,  a  Protestant,  mar- 
ried a  Miss  Nagle,  of  a  respectable 
Catholic  family  of  the  county  of  Cork. 
He  was  bred  as  an  attorney,  and  re- 
moving from  Limerick  to  Dublin  be- 
came engaged  in  a  profitable  practice 
in  that  city.  Here  at  his  residence  on 
Arran  Quay,  then  a  fashionable  quar- 
ter of  the  town,  his  son  Edmund  was 
born  on  the  first  of  January  (the  12th, 
new  style),  1728 — if  we  follow  the  re- 
gister of  Trinity  College — a  year  also 
memorable  for  its  introduction  of 
Oliver  Goldsmith  into  the  world. 
The  date  given  by  his  biographer  Prior 
is  1730;  his  latest  biographer,  Mac- 
knight,  thinks  that  many  difficulties 


would  be  removed  by  placing  it  in 
1729.  In  his  childhood  and  early  life 
Edmund  was  of  a  delicate  constitution, 
being  threatened  with  consumption. 
Of  his  father's  family  of  fourteen  or 
fifteen  children  all  but  four  died  young, 
— an  elder  brother  Garret ;  Richard,  the 
celebrated  London  wit,  the  friend  of 
Goldsmith  and  immortalized  in  his 
verses,  and  a  sister  Juliana,  married  to 
a  Mr.  French,  from  whom  are  descended 
any  surviving  representatives  of  the 
family.  In  consequence  of  his  ill 
health  Edmund  was  removed  about 
the  age  of  six  from  the  residence  in 
Dublin  to  the  house  of  his  maternal 
grandfather  at  Castletown  Roche,  the 
home  of  the  Nagles,  in  the  county  of 
Cork,  a  district  famous  for  its  his- 
torical memories  and  its  association 
with  the  life  of  the  poet  Spenser,  who 
here  from  the  Castle  of  Kilcolman 
looked  out  upon  the  scenery  which  he 
introduced  in  the  Faery  Queen.  Spen- 
ser was  always  a  favorite  with  Burke, 
and  his  eloquent  biographer  Macknight 
is  inclined  to  trace  something  of  the 
influence  of  the  poet  upon  his  mind 
and  writings  to  this  early  acquaintance 
with  the  name  and  fame  of  the  bard 
in  this  "  main  haunt  and  region  of  his 

(159) 


160 


EDMUND    BUEKE. 


song."  "The  greatest  of  writers,"  is 
his  remark,  "  has  said  that  a  divinity 
may  ever  be  seen  directing  each  indi- 
vidual human  life  to  its  purposed  end. 
Who  cannot  discern  it  here?  Read 
amid  the  scenes  in  which  it  was  writ- 
ten, the  Faery  Queen  could  never  be 
forgotten ;  and  many  a  splendid  sen- 
tence and  poetical  allusion,  which  give 
such  a  peculiar  fascination  to  the  driest 
subject  when  treated  by  Burke,  may 
easily  be  traced  to  the  bard  of  Kilcol- 
man,  whose  mind  was  filled  with  such 
noble  visions  of  all  that  is  beautiful  in 
humanity;  who  was,  as  his  View  of 
the  State  of  Ireland  amply  testifies,  not 
only  a  great  poet,  but  also  a  true  polit- 
ical philosopher,  and  who  suffered  so 
cruelly  for  his  attachment  to  the  coun- 
try of  his  adoption."  Of  course,  the 
boy,  if  he  read  Spenser  at  all,  could 
not  read  as  the  man  afterwards  learned 
to  read ;  but  the  exercise  of  the  imag- 
ination, natural  to  youth,  must  always 
have  had  a  peculiar  fascination  for 
Burke,  and  who  better  than  Spenser, 
whose  verse  has  inspired  many  poets, 
to  engage  the  attention,  and  to  teach 
the  lesson  to  the  infant  mind  of  all 
beauty,  grace,  tenderness  in  that  fas- 
cination of  knightly  adventure  ? 

It  was  an  advantage  to  Burke  that 
so  much  of  his  boyhood  was  passed  in 
the  country  in  the  society  of  his  kind 
relatives.  He  was  treated  with  indul- 
gence and  consideration,  lived  happily, 
and  always  looked  back  upon  this  pe- 
riod of  his  life  with  pleasure.  His 
mother  had  taught  him  to  read  and  he 
now  attended  the  village  school ;  but 
he  was  not  pressed  in  his  studies ; 
nature  and  the  simple  enjoyable  life 
about  him  were  his  best  instructors, 


and  the  improvement  of  health  his 
most  desirable  achievement.  Return- 
ing to  Dublin  at  the  age  of  twelve,  if 
we  accept  the  earliest  date  of  his 
birth,  he  passed  a  year  at  home,  after 
which  he  was  placed  with  his  brothers 
Garret  and  Richard  at  a  boarding- 
school  at  Ballitore,  a  pretty  village 
about  thirty  miles  south  of  the  capi- 
tal, in  the  county  Kildare,  established 
by  the  members  of  the  Society  of 
Friends  who  had  settled  at  that  place. 
It  was  fortunate  in  the  possession  of 
its  first  schoolmaster,  Abraha?n  Shack- 
leton,  a  man  of  worth  and  learning, 
ever  held  in  great  regard  by  Burke, 
who  once  sounded  his  praises  in  the 
House  of  Commons,  declaring  that  he 
had  been  educated  as  a  Protestant  of  the 
Church  of  England  by  a  dissenter  who 
was  an  honor  to  his  sect,  though  that 
sect  was  considered  one  of  the  purest. 
Under  his  eye  he  had  read  the  Bible, 
morning,  noon  and  night,  and  had  ever 
since  been  the  happier  and  better  man 
for  such  reading.  The  boy  Edmund 
took  kindly  to  the  good  Quaker's  in- 
structions and  studied  diligently,  read 
much  and  profited  greatly  by  the  inti- 
macy which  he  formed  with  his  pre- 
ceptor's son  Richard,  who  was  his 
correspondent  in  after  years,  and  with 
whom  he  cherished  the  most  friendly 
relations  during  a  life  which  ended  a 
few  years  only  before  his  own.  It  was 
a  school  of  liberal,  generous  ideas,  that 
academy  at  Ballitore,  which  was  kept 
up  by  the  Shackleton  family,  in  three 
generations,  father,  son  and  grandson. 
There  is  a  story  related  by  Prior  of 
Burke  in  these  school-days  which  shows 
"  the  child,  the  father  of  the  man." 
"  Seeing  a  poor  man  pulling  down  his 


EDMUND  BUKKE. 


161 


own  hut  near  the  village,  and  hearing 
that  it  was  done  by  order  of  a  great 
gentleman  in  a  gold-laced  hat  (the 
parish  conservator  of  the  roads),  upon 
the  plea  of  being  too  near  the  high- 
way, the  young  philanthropist,  his 
bosoin  swelling  with  indignation,  ex- 
claimed, that  were  he  a  man  and  pos- 
sessed of  authority,  the  poor  should 
not  thus  be  oppressed."  After  nearly 
two  years  at  Ballitore,  Burke  left  the 
school  to  become  a  student  of  Trinity 
College,  Dublin.  He  carried  with 
him  a  fair  training  in  the  classics  and 
some  skill  in  verse-making,  encourag- 
ed by  rivalry  with  his  friend,  Richard 
Shackleton,  with  whom  about  this 
time  he  competed  in  the  translation  of 
the  Idyll  of  Theocritus  on  the  death 
of  Adonis.  He  had  also  spent  much 
time  in  perusing  with  delight  the  old 
romances,  Palmerin  of  England,  and 
Don  Belianis  of  Greece. 

His  college  career,  though  not  dis- 
tinguished by  any  extraordinary  aca- 
demical honors  or  achievements  in 
scholarship,  was  characterized  by  reg- 
ularity and  a  fair  application  of  his 
powers.  He  probably  was  no  profi- 
cient in  Greek,  but  he  must  have  made 
a  good  general  acquaintance  with  some 
of  the  leading  authors  of  that  tongue, 
while  he  gave  his  admiration  to  the 
Latin  poets  Virgil,  Ovid  and  Horace, 
and  especially  to  the  dramatic  and 
philosophical  historian,  Sallust.  Meta- 
physics he  valued  always  rather  for 
their  power  of  enriching  the  mind  by 
adding  to  its  faculties  of  apprehen- 
sion, than  for  the  science  itself.  He 
in  turn  applied  himself  with  zeal  to 
natural  philosophy,  logic  and  history, 
and  ended  with  poetry.  Milton  seems 
21 


to  have  attracted  his  attention  more 
than  Shakespeare,  and  he  would  seem 
to  have  entered  more  heartily  into  the 
enjoyment  of  the  ^Eneid  than  of  Ho- 
mer. While  at  college  he  translated 
in  rhyme  the  panegyric  of  country 
-life  at  the  close  of  the  second  Georgia 
of  Virgil,  if  not  with  peculiar  poetic 
felicity,  certainly  with  a  creditable  ap- 
preciation of  the  original  and  of  his 
English  model  in  Dryden.  On  one 
occasion,  in  a  Dublin  literary  society 
of  which  he  was  a  member,  he  was 
applauded  for  his  recitation  of  the 
speech  of  Moloch  in  Paradise  Lost. 
He  also  attended  the  meetings  of  the 
Historical  Society,  wh'ere  politics  were 
discussed,  and  wrote  two  satirical  arti- 
cles, from  the  government  or  conserva- 
tive point  of  view,  directed  against 
what  he  considered  the  overwrought 
patriotic  sentiments  and  doctrines  of 
the  day.  In  1748  he  took  his  Bache- 
lor's Degree  at  Trinity  College,  and 
not  long  after  proceeded  to  London  to 
enroll  himself  as  a  student  of  the  law 
at  the  Middle  Temple. 

The  law  by  no  means  engrossed  the 
whole  of  Burke's  time  during  his 
early  years  in  London,  which  he  was 
expected  by  his  father  to  devote  to 
the  profession.  He  seems  never  to 
have  taken  very  kindly  to  it.  His 
mind  was  too  much  imbued  with  lit- 
erature and  philosophy  to  relish  very 
greatly  its  technical  subtleties.  He 
knew  shorter  paths  to  learning,  which 
he  esteemed  of  greater  account.  He 
was  too  essentially  moral  and  practi- 
cal to  get  entangled  in  its  obscure  and 
thorny  intricacies.  Hence  while  he 
regarded  it  in  its  political  and  social 
relations  as  "  one  of  the  first  and  no- 


1612 


EDMUND  BUKKE. 


blest  of  human  sciences,  doing  more 
to  quicken  and  invigorate  the  under- 
standing than  all  the  other  kinds  of 
learning  put  together,"  he  thought  it 
"  not  apt,  except  in  persons  very  hap- 
pily born,  to  open  and  to  liberalize 
the  inind  exactly  in  the  same  propor- 
tion." Indifferent  health  also  came  in 
the  way  of  any  great  exertions  in 
the  study  of  the  profession.  We  hear 
of  visits  to  different  parts  of  England, 
to  Bristol  and  elsewhere ;  while  in  Lon- 
don, through  his  acquaintance  with 
Arthur  Murphy,  he  is  becoming  famil- 
iar with  literary  and  dramatic  life.* 

An  agreeable  chapter  could  be  writ- 
ten regarding  Burke' s  female  acquaint- 
ances, their  virtues,  their  failings,  and 
their  celebrity.  There  is  Peg  "Wof- 
fington,  the  unfortunate  actress,  the 
(laughter  of  a  poor  grocer's  widow  on 
Ormond  Quay,  Dublin,  who  fascinated 
everybody  who  came  within  her  reach, 
and  with  whom  young  Edmund  ex- 
changed glances  in  the  green-room  of 
Drury  Lane.  There  is  Mrs.  Montague, 
one  of  the  most  brilliant  and  accom- 
plished women  of  her  time,  of  great 
wealth  and  of  great  kindness,  whose 
house  was  always  open  to  men  of  let- 
ters, and  who,  in  1759,  took  a  real 
pleasure  in  introducing  the  young  au- 
thor of  the  "  Essay  on  the  Sublime  and 
Beautiful"  to  her  great  friends.  There 
was  Burke's  good-natured  country- 

*  For  the  remainder  of  this  notice  we  are  in- 
debted to  an  appreciative  article  in  the  ' '  North 
British  Review  "  based  on  Thomas  Macknight's 
eloquent  "History  of  the  Life  and  Times  of 
Edmund  Burke,"  to  which  as  well  as  to  "  Ed- 
mund Burke,  a  Historical  Study,"  by  John 
Morley  (1869),  the  reader  may  be  referred  for 
the  fullest  presentation  of  the  man  and  his 
character  in  history. 


woman,  Mrs.  Vesey,  of  Bolton  Row 
the  friend  and  rival  of  Mrs.  Montague, 

O  ! 

who  made  all  her  guests  at  their  ease 
and  who  was  as  full  of  Irish  frolic  and 
of  Irish  bulls,  as  if  she  still  nourished 
on  the  banks  of  the  Liffey.  There 
were  the  two  model  women  of  French 
society  in  those  days,  Madame  du  Def  • 
fand  and  Mademoiselle  de  L'Espinasse, 
of  whose  class  Sidney  Smith  onco 
said  that  they  "  outraged  every  law  of 
civilized  society,  and  gave  very  pleas- 
ant little  suppers."  Burke  attended 
those  suppers  when  in  Paris  in  1773, 
and  listened  to  the  wit  and  the  athe- 
ism that  circled  so  freely  round  their 
tables.  Finance  and  philosophy,  the 
drama  and  the  Contrat  Social,  D'Al- 
embert  and  Diderot,  Voltaire  and 
Rousseau,  Helvetius  and  "  le  bon 
David," — all  were  discussed,  all  were 
made  the  subject  of  some  jeu  tfesprit. 
Burke  was  disgusted  with  what  he  saw 
of  French  society,  and  in  his  "  French 
Revolution  "  has  held  it  up  as  a  terri- 
ble spectacle  to  all  coming  time. 

But  the  young  writer  has  gone  to 
his  garret  with  health,  hope,  and  genius 
on  his  side,  and  it  will  go  hard  with 
him  if  he  cannot  wring  from  letters 
what  will  supply  his  humble  board 
As  an  ingenious  decoy  to  the  English 
public,  Burke  brought  out  a  pamphlet 
entitled  A  Vindication  of  Natural 
Society  (1756),  which  he  dexterously 
ascribed  to  a  late  "noble  writer." 
Every  one  pronounced  the  brochure 
Bolingbroke's.  It  was  full  of  his  in- 
genious arguments,  it  was  full  of  his 
bold  assumptions,  and  it  was  his  style 
all  over.  But  so  high  authorities  as 
Lord  Chesterfield  and  Mr.  Pitt  had 
pronounced  Lord  Bolingbroke's  style 


EDMUND  BURKE. 


163 


''inimitable;"  and  here  the  most  ac- 
complished man  of  fashion,  and  the 
most  brilliant  orator  of  the  age,  were 
both  at  fault,  for  it  actually  turned 
out  to  be  the  work  of  a  poor  law  stu- 
dent of  the  Inner  Temple.  Hencefor- 
ward Burke  had  no  need  to  enter  the 
lists  with  his  visor  down.  This  philo- 
sophical satire  placed  his  claims  to  lit- 
erary recognition  beyond  all  doubt, 
and  he  was  only  following  the  dictates 
of  prudence  or  of  policy  when  he 
ventured  before  the  public  hereafter 
anonymously.  A  few  months  after- 
wards there  appeared  A  Philosophical 
Inquiry  into  the  Origin  of  our  Ideas 
of  the  Sublime  and  Beautiful.  His 
theory,  that  everything  was  beautiful 
that  possessed  the  power  of  relaxing 
the  nerves  and  fibres,  and  thus  induc- 
ing a  certain  degree  of  bodily  languor 
and  sinking,  is  almost  too  grotesque 
to  be  calmly  commented  on ;  yet  the 
book  is  full  of  the  most  ingenious 
observations  on  mental  phenomena; 
and,  while  comparatively  cold  and  un- 
impassioned  in  its  style,  it  possesses, 
nevertheless,  many  specimens  of  rare 
illustration  and  most  apt  allusion, 
charming  the  reader  even  when  the 
oddity  of  his  postulate  affronts  the 
reason,  and  does  violence  to  the  feel- 
ings. 

Towards  the  end  of  1756,  or  early 
in  the  succeeding  year,  Burke  married 
Miss  Nugent,  a  countrywoman  of  his 
own,  the  daughter  of  Dr.  Nugent,  a 
physician  in  Bath.  As  this  lady  was 
brought  up  a  Roman  Catholic,  it  was 
probably  this  circumstance  that  gave 
rise  to  some  whispers  respecting 
Burke's  alleged  oscillation  between 
his  own  faith  and  hers.  After  her 


marriage  she  joined  the  Church  of 
England,  made  to  him  one  of  the  best 
of  wives,  and  survived  him  some  four> 
teen  years.  His  father-in-law  came  up 
shortly  afterwards  to  London,  and  for 
many  years  Burke  found  a  home  in 
Wimpole  Street  with  this  excellent 
physician.  In  1759  he  became  con- 
nected with  Dodsley  the  publisher, 
with  whom  he  engaged  to  write  the 
historical  section  of  the  Annual  Reg- 
ister for  £100  a-year.  For  the  next 
fifteen  years  or  so,  his  lucid  mind  can 
be  traced  in  its  pages,  giving  order 
and  arrangement  to  its  reports,  and  in- 
fusing genius  into  its  details.  It  was 
during  the  same  year  that  he  was  in- 
troduced by  Lord  Charlemont  to  "  Sin- 
gle-speech "  Hamilton,  a  selfish,  crafty 
Scot,  of  much  more  ability  than  he 
generally  gets  credit  for,  who  had  a 
seat  at  the  Board  of  Trade  and  a  resi- 
dence at  Hampton  Court.  Whatever 
was  the  nature  of  Burke's  connection 
with  this  man — for  it  has  not  been 
clearly  defined — we  are  safe  in  assert- 
ing that  it  was  in  the  manufacture  of 
ideas  that  the  young  writer  was  em- 
ployed. He  lived  with  Hamilton  for 
the  next  six  years,  and,  after  an  irre- 
concilable quarrel,  the  £300  of  Irish 
pension  which  the  wily  Hamilton  had 
procured  for  him,  was  thrown  up,  and 
Burke  turned  his  back  on  "  Single- 
speech"  forever. 

Shortly  after  the  Annual  Register 
was  started,  Burke  met  Johnson,  for 
the  first  time,  at  Garrick's  table. 
Johnson  was  close  on  fifty,  and  we  find 
the  editor  of  the  Register  in  1759  re- 
proaching the  nation  with  having  done 
nothing  for  the  author  of  Rasselas, 
Gruff  old  Samuel  seem?  to  have  token 


164 


EDMUND  BUEKE. 


immensely  to  Burke,  and  the  violence 
of  his  political  views  did  not  deter 
him  from  recognizing  and  giving  pub 
licity  to  his  admiration  of  the  Irish- 
man's worth  and  genius.  The  cele- 
brated Club  in  Gerrard  Street,  of 
vhich  Burke  was  one  of  the  select 
aine,  was  founded  in  1764. 

On  the  17th  of  July,  1765,  Burke 
somehow  got  introduced  to  Lord 
Rockingham,  and  became  his  private 
secretary  by  the  obliging  services  of 
his  friends  William  Burke  and  Wil- 
liam Fitzherbert.  This  William  Burke 
was  simply  a  kinsman  of  Edmund's, 
though  the  latter  frequently  calls  him 
"  cousin  "  in  his  correspondence.  Wil- 
liam likewise  gained  for  him  the  ac- 
quaintance of  Lord  Verney,  from  whom, 
a  few  months  afterwards,  he  received 
the  position  of  Member  of  Parliament 
for  the  borough  of  Wendover,  near 
the  foot  of  the  Chiltern  Hills.  This 
borough  was  a  close  one,  under  Lord 
Verney's  influence  ;  and  in  those  days, 
when  as  much  as  £9,000  was  the  price 
paid  for  such  a  post,  and  £70,000  for 
a  county,  Edmund  Burke  required  to 
thank  those  powers  who  had  put  it 
into  Verney's  heart  to  be  so  liberal. 
On  the  26th  of  December,  1765,  Burke 
became  member  for  Wendover ;  on 
the  14th  of  the  following  month  he 
entered  Parliament ;  and  on  the  27th 
he  made  his  maiden  speech. 

The  Rockingham  Whigs  had,  the 
previous  year,  replaced  the  incompe- 
tent ministry  of  Grenville;  and  al- 
though Lord  Rockingham  was  an 
excellent  man,  of  sound  integrity,  of 
great  courage,  an  inflexible  patriot,  and 
a  disinterested  politician,  the  House 
of  Commons  was,  nevertheless,  in  no 


humor  to  listen  to  calm  debate  or  tc 
impassioned  harangue.  The  Ameri 
can  colonies  came  before  the  British 
Parliament  in  a  federal  capacity ;  and 
it  was  on  a  question  touching  the  com- 
petency of  the  House  of  Commons  to 
receive  such  a  petition,  that  Burke 
first  spoke.  Pitt  was  understood  to 
favor  the  petition,  and  the  Adminis- 
tration considered  the  admission  of  it 
an  open  question.  The  new  member 
argued,  in  a  speech  of  much  force  and 
beauty,  that  the  presentation  of  such 
a  petition  was  of  itself  an  acknowl- 
edgement of  the  House's  jurisdiction. 
If  Lord  Rockingham  had  any  fears  for 
the  discretion  and  tact  of  his  new 
secretary,  this  maiden  appearance  of 
his  set  such  suspicions  at  rest  forever. 
The  great  Pitt  was  the  first  to  rise  and 
bestow  a  warm  encomium  on  the  new 
member. 

Unlike  the  young  aristocratic  po- 
litician of  a  former  age,  and,  per 
chance,  also  of  this  one,  Burke  did  not 
content  himself  with  merely  glancing 
over  the  newspapers  at  his  club  of  a 
morning,  before  marching  to  duty :  he 
set  himself  vigorously  to  work,  as  only 
he  knew  how,  in  analyzing  the  whole 
work  of  government,  and  the  complica- 
ted interests  of  the  British  Empire. 
In  his  successive  appearances,  he  seems, 
by  universal  testimony,  to  have  taken 
the  House  entirely  by  storm.  Old  men 
and  young  men,  able  men  and  men  less 
able,  trading  politicians  and  soldier? 
of  fortune, — all  spoke  of  his  orationa 
with  enthusiasm. 

The  Rockingham  Whigs,  after  a 
very  short  term  of  office,  had  to  re- 
sign, and  Pitt,  who  had  recently  been 
raised  to  the  peerage  as  Earl  of  Chat 


EDMUND  BUEKE. 


165 


ham,  again  took  the  reins.  But  he  did 
not  hold  them  long ;  the  Duke  of  Graf- 
ton  came  into  office  in  1766,  and  was 
succeeded  by  Lord  North  in  1770, 
whose  premiership  lasted  through  the 
American  war  down  to  1782. 

On  the  19th  of  April,  1774,  on  Mr. 
Rose  Fuller's  motion  that  the  House 
would  take  into  consideration  the  tax 
of  threepence  per  pound  on  tea  import- 
ed into  the  American  colonies,  Burke 
gave  one  of  his  noblest  speeches  on 
American  taxation.  During  the  deliv- 
ery of  this  masterly  oration,  idle  poli- 
ticians, drawn  thither  by  common  re- 
port, filled  the  lobbies  and  staircases 
of  the  House.  Loud  cries  of  "  Go  on ! — 
go  on !"  greeted  the  speaker,  on  his 
pausing  to  ask  if  he  tired  gentlemen. 
Members  of  all  shades  of  political 
opinion  declared,  enthusiastically,  that 
here  was  the  most  wonderful  man  they 
had  ever  listened  to,  and  the  American 
agents  were  with  difficulty  restrained 
from  hurraing  their  admiration  in  the 
gallery.  So  entirely  and  emphatically 
had  he  got  men's  prejudices  under  for 
the  time  by  the  force  of  his  persuasive 
voice,  that  the  king  and  his  crotchet  of 
taxing  America  were  temporarily  for- 
gotten, and,  even  at  the  risk  of  being 
regarded  as  personal  enemies  to  his 
majesty,  adherents  of  the  ministry 
were  known  to  join  in  the  general 
and  irresistible  burst  of  applause. 

Perhaps  the  most  perfect  specimen 
of  Burke's  oratory  is  to  be  found  in 
his  great  speech  on  administrative  re- 
form, delivered  on  the  llth  of  Febru- 
ary, 1780.  At  the  height  of  his  pow- 
ers, and  in  the  full  blaze  of  his  fame,  he 
was  likewise  of  more  gentle  temper 
thau  he  afterwards  became.  All  Eng- 


land sang  his '  praises.  "While  difficul- 
ty is  good  for  man,  as  Burke  himself 
declared,  there  are  occasions  on  which 
sunshine  is  one  of  the  most  joyoua 
things  on  earth.  He  opened  his  ad- 
dress by  laying  down  the  principles 
on  which  a  wise  reform  should  be 
founded,  neither  too  liberal  nor  too 
conservative,  and  then  proceeded  to 
apply  those  principles. 

The  sound  political  wisdom  which 
held  the  reins  while  the  bold  imagina- 
tion went  forward  on  the  work  of  re- 
form ;  the  alluring  charms  of  poetical 
illustration  which  clothed  the  past 
with  life,  and  the  future  with  radiance ; 
the  brilliant  flashes  of  wit  which 
played  up  like  electric  coruscations 
over  the  House;  the  condensed  rea- 
soning, the  burning  emotion,  and  the 
fervid  appeals  to  the  most  noble  pas- 
sions, rendered  this  speech  the  most 
remarkable  one  in  a  small  compass  that 
the  orator  ever  delivered.  For  three 
hours  the  audience  was  spell-bound. 
Ministerialists,  courtiers,  sycophants, 
amid  tumultuous  cheers,  bore  testimo- 
mony  to  the  greatness  of  the  success. 
The  historian,  Gibbon,  though  a  king's 
friend,  praised  it ;  and  even  Lord  North 
condescended  to  say  of  it  that  it  had 
excelled  all  he  had  ever  heard  in  the 
House. 

Burke's  prodigious  labors  in  the 
prosecution  of  Warren  Hastings,  for 
his  alleged  cruelty  to  the  Rohillas  and 
the  Begums  of  Oude,  formally  began  in 
1784,  and  the  actual  trial  commenced 
in  Westminster  Hall  in  February,  1788 
The  impeachment  lasted  nine  days  in 
all,  four  of  which  were  occupied  with 
the  oratory  of  Burke.  He  opened  his 
charge  in  the  presence  of  the  most  au 


166 


EDMUND    BURKE. 


gust  assemblage  of  rank  and  intellect 
that  perhaps  ever  met  in  Westminster 
Hall  to  listen  to  any  single  speaker. 
On  the  third  day  of  the  trial,  which 
was  perhaps,  rhetorically  considered, 
the  most  important,  the  speaker,  with 
the  documents  in  his  raised  hands  as  a 
testimony  to  heaven  of  the  guilt  of  the 
person  charged,  with  streaming  eyes 
and  with  suffused  countenance,  related 
how  slow  fires  were  made  to  inflict  un- 
mentionable tortures  on  tender  wom- 
en, how  death  met  life  at  the  very 
gates  and  strangled  it.  His  audience 
could  endure  the  agony  no  longer,  and 
burst  out  many  of  them  into  tears. 
Mrs.  Siddons  confessed  that  all  the  ter- 
rors and  pity  which  she  had  ever  wit- 
nessed on  the  stage,  sank  into  insignifi- 
cance before  the  scene  she  had  just  be- 
held. Mrs.  Sheridan  fainted;  and  the 
stern  Lord  Chancellor  Thurlow,  who 
always  in  the  most  headstrong  way  had 
•nsisted  on  Hastings'  innocence,  was 
/bserved  for  once  in  his  life  to  shed  a 
tear.  "This  peroration,"  said  Wind- 
ham,  himself  an  orator  of  great  accom- 
plishments, as  Burke  closed  his  address, 
"  was  the  noblest  ever  uttered  by  man." 
It  may  astonish  not  a  few  to  be  told 
that  this  speech  was  not  written,  that 
the  speaker  trusted  to  his  never-failing 
supply  of  appropriate  language  in 
which  to  clothe  his  ideas  as  they 
crowded  upon  his  brain. 

So  thoroughly  had  Burke  mastered 
the  ?,rt  of  government,  and  so  complete- 
ly new  were  his  political  speculations, 
that  this  very  thoroughness  and  novelty 
stood  in  the  way  of  the  reception  of 
his  ideas  by  the  British  public,  and 
even  by  the  British  Parliament.  It 
lias  taken  the  greater  portion  of  a 


century  to  place  the  majority  of  the 
House  of   Commons  abreast  of   what 
he  spoke  long  years  before.    There  are 
few  of  the  great  measures  of  the  pres- 
ent day  which  his  far-seeing  wisdom  did 
not  anticipate,  and  which  his  feelings 
did  not  valiantly  defend.     He  advoca- 
ted free  trade  many  years  before  it  be- 
came a  watchword  of  party,  and  sup- 
ported the  claims  of   Catholics  when 
Fox  was  a  boy  in  small  clothes.     Cath- 
olic emancipation  was  granted  many 
years  after  his  death,  but  only  as  a 
means  of  preserving  the  loyalty  of  the 
Irish  nation.     He  supported  the  peti- 
tion of  the  Dissenters  to  be  relieved 
from  the  restrictions  which  the  Church 
of  England  in  its  own  behoof  had  im- 
posed  upon   them.     He  opposed   the 
cruel  laws  against  insolvents,  and  at- 
tempted  in  vain  to  mitigate  the  penal 
code.      He  strove  to  abolish  the  old 
plan  of  enlistment ;   and  he  attacked 
the  slave  trade,  which  the  king  wished 
to  preserve  as  part  of  the  British  con 
stitution.     His  labors  in  law  reform 
are  well  known,  and  he  is  almost  uni- 
versally recognized  as  the  first  financial 
reformer  whom  the  British  nation  pro- 
duced.    By  means1  of  various  bills,  he 
carried  through  parliament  a  system 
of  official  reorganization  which,  in  the 
single  office  of  paymaster-general,  saved 
the  country  £25,000  a  year. 

In  March,  1768,  he  purchased  a  small 
estate  in  the  county  of  Buckingham, 
twenty-three  miles  out  of  London,  for 
some  £23,000.  This  agreeable  resi- 
dence was  named  Gregories;  and  is 
situated  near  Beaconsfield,  where  Burke 
now  lies  buried.  He  sat  for  Bristol  from 
1774  till  1780;  then  for  Malton,  in 
Yorkshire,  till  the  close  of  his  political 


EDMUND   BUKKE. 


career.  On  his  retirement  from  public  af- 
fairs in  1794,  the  representation  of  Mai- 
ton  was  delegated  to  his  son,  a  young 
man  of  good  promise,  who  had  pre- 
viously filled  the  post  of  deputy-pay- 
master to  his  father,  at  £500  a  year. 
But  this  only  son,  the  joy  and  pride 
of  his  heart,  was  cut  off  in  a  few  months 
by  a  rapid  consumption,  in  his  thirty- 
sixth  year.  The  grief  of  the  father  at 
this  great  catastrophe  is  said,  by  Dr. 
Lawrence,  to  have  been  "truly  terri- 
ble." Bursting  frequently  from  all 
control,  he  would  rush  into  the  room 
where  his  dead  son  lay,  and  "throw 
himself  headlong,  as  it  happened,  on 
the  body,  the  bed,  or  the  floor." 

Thenceforward  Burke's  life  was  im- 
measurably desolate.  His  affections, 
which  had  always  been  fervid,  now 
became  almost  ungovernable.  His  feel- 
ings occasionally  mastered  his  reason  ; 
and  the  strong  oak  of  the  forest  sensi- 
bly swayed.  "  I  live,"  says  this  broken- 
hearted old  man,  "in  an  inverted  or- 
der. They  who  ought  to  have  succeed- 
ed me  have  gone  before  me.  They  who 
should  have  been  to  me  as  posterity 
are  in  the  place  of  ancestors.  The 
storm  has  gone  over  me,  and  I  lie  like 
one  of  those  old  oaks  which  the  late 
hurricane  has  scattered  about  me.  I 
am  stripped  of  all  my  honors;  I  am 
torn  up  by  the  roots." 

His  increased  irritability  is  observa- 
ble, likewise,  in  the  writings  which  he 
gave  to  the  world  after  this  date.  His 
Observations  on  a  late  Publication,  inti- 
tuled the  Present  State  of  the  Nation, 
which  appeared  in  1769,  was  admitted 
by  highly  competent  judges  to  outstrip 
the  publications  of  Halifax,  of  Swift, 
of  Addison,  and  of  Bolingbroke.  His 


Thoughts  on  the  Causes  of  the  Present 
Discontents  (1770),  while  it  called 
down  the  dignified  wrath  of  Chatham, 
the  cynical  sneers  of  Horace  Walpole, 
and  the  screeches  of  Mrs.  Catherine 
Macauley,  sister  to  Sawbridge,  Lord 
Mayor  of  London,  is  now  admitted  on 
all  hands  to  be  the  most  perfect  expo- 
sition of  Whiggism  which  has  ever 
been  made. 

It  was  in  1790  that  his  work  on  the 
French  Eevolution  made  its  appearance. 
It  was  read  every  where,  and  talked 
about  by  every  body.  No  political 
work  on  the  current  events  of  the  day 
ever  equalled  it  in  interest,  and  in  the 
sudden  reputation  which  it  acquired. 
Nothing  else  was  asked  for  or  thought 
of.  Edition  followed  edition  quicker 
almost  than  the  printers  could  throw 
them  off.  Thirty  thousand  copies  were 
soon  in  the  hands  of  the  public.  In  no 
place  was  its  effect  greater  than  in  the 
court  of  George  III.,  where  for  long 
years  the  name  of  the  author  had  not 
been  mentioned  without  a  shudder. 
His  majesty  himself  read  the  book, 
and  would  have  every  one  read  it  near 
him.  "  It  will  do  you  good — do  you 
good,"  said  he;  "it  is  a  book  every 
gentleman  should  read."  Meanwhile 
Fox  was  consigned  to  perdition  by  the 
creatures  of  the  court :  Burke  was  a 
great  man,  and  a  good  man.  Even 
clever  Miss  Burney  (Madame  D'Ar 
blay),  the  intelligent  keeper  of  the 
robes,  felt  her  interest  in  Burke  revive 
on  this  royal  criticism.  The  book  was 
talked  over  with  much  admiration  by 
Pitt  and  Wilberforce,  and  other  minis- 
terialists, at  a  public  dinner  at  Wim- 
bledon. The  fame  of  it  reached  the 
banks  of  the  Isis  and  the  shores  of  the 


168 


EDMUND  BUEKE. 


Liffey ;  and  grave  academicals  in  Ox- 
ford transmitted  their  thanks  to  the 
author,  and  in  Dublin  they  made  him 
an  LL.D. !  All  the  crowned  heads  of 
Europe,  the  French  nobility  and  princes 
in  exile,  King  Stanislaus  of  Poland,  the 
princes  and  sovereigns  of  Germany,  and 
Catherine  of  the  icy  North,  sent  their 
special  congratulations  to  the  author  of 
the  Reflections.  This  was  flattering  to 
poor  Burke,  who  had  battled  so  long 
and  so  earnestly  under  neglect  and  de- 
preciation. Yet  Fox  could  not  bear 
the  book ;  Sheridan  could  not  bear  it ; 
and  young  Mackintosh,  at  the  age  of 
twenty-six,  wrote  a  reply  to  it.  Many 
of  the  English  people  liked  it,  yet  many 
of  them  disliked  it.  Some  fifty  replies 
were  penned  against  it ;  but  the  only 
one  that  is  still  read  is  the  production 
of  a  political  staymaker,  the  "  infidel " 
Tom  Paine.  Some  two  years  before 
Burke's  death,  the  king  saw  good  to 
bestow  upon  him  two  considerable 
pensions,  which  amounted  in  all,  dur- 
ing his  life,  to  something  over  £10,- 
000.  Except  £4000  per  annum,  which 
he  received  as  paymaster  under  Shel- 
burne's  ministery,  this  was  all  that 
he  ever  obtained  either  from  king  or 
courtier. 

From  the  time  of  his  son's  death, 
Burke  never  dined  from  home.  His 
house,  formerly  like  a  hotel,  was  now 
the  picture  of  desolation.  He  studious- 
ly avoided  visitors,  and  wrapt  himself 
'ip  in  the  cold  folds  of  his  own  great 


sorrow.  His  head  declined,  and  his 
body  bent  together ;  and  the  peasants  in 
the  neighboring  fields,  accustomed  to  a 
kind  word  as  he  passed,  now  shrunk  off 
awe-stricken  at  the  spectacle  of  so  great 
a  grief.  Yet  still  his  mind  was  fresh, 
and  his  faculties  vigorous.  He  spent  a 
considerable  portion  of  the  days  which 
preceded  his  death  in  the  perusal  of  a 
good  book  sent  him  by  a  good  man — 
"  Practical  Christianity,"  by  his  friend 
Wilberforce.  On  the  9th  of  July, 
1797,  Edmund  Burke  expired  at  Greg- 
ories,  without  a  groan,  in  the  sixty-fifth 
year  of  his  age.  His  disease  was  a  scir- 
rhous  affection  of  the  stomach.  "  His 
end,"  wrote  Dr.  Lawrence,  on  the  morn- 
ing of  his  death,  over  his  lifeless  re- 
mains, "  was  suited  to  the  simple  great- 
ness of  his  mind,  which  he  displayed 
through  life — every  way  unaffected, 
without  levity,  without  ostentation, 
full  of  natural  grace  and  dignity." 

By  his  own  express  injunctions,  he 
was  to  be  interred  in  the  family  bury- 
ing-ground  at  Beaconsfield,  beside  his 
brother  Richard,  and  yet  a  dearer 
friend  to  the  old  man's  heart.  On  the 
15th  of  the  month,  at  eight  o'clock,  on 
a  beautiful  July  evening,  while  the 
sinking  sun  sent  its  last  rays  through 
the  casements  of  the  little  church,  he 
was  slowly  lowered  into  the  grave,  and 
laid  besides  the  ashes  of  his  son. 

Burke's  widow,  who  survived  him 
for  fifteen  years,  was  removed  to  the 
same  resting-place  in  1812 


SIR  JOSHUA    REYNOLDS. 


1T1 


speaks   of   his    "honest   similitudes," 
vdiich  is  a  correct  description  of  his 
pictures.     They  are  formal,  common- 
place,   matter-of-fact   representations ; 
and  this  degreee   of   skill,  we  know 
from  Sir  Joshua,  could  be  acquired  as 
readily   as   a   mechanic    trade.      The 
young   apprentice,   in    his   ignorance, 
shared   the  contemporary  opinion  of 
Hudson's  capabilities.     Faith  and  do- 
cility were  serviceable  qualities  in  a 
youth  who  had  nearly  everything  to 
learn ;  and  a  considerable  amount  of 
rudimentary  practice  could  be  acquired 
in  the  studio  of  a  man  who  had  at 
least  the  faculty  of  producing  "  hon- 
est   similitudes."      "As  for    Joshua," 
his  father  reports,  in  August,   1742, 
"  nobody,  by  his  letters  to  me,  was  ever 
better  pleased  in  his  employment,  in 
his  master,  in  everything.     '  While  I 
am  doing  this,  I  am  the  happiest  crea- 
ture alive,'  is  his  expression."     He  had 
then  been  a  pupil  little  more  than  a 
year  and  a  half,  and  by  his  talents  and 
enthusiasm  he  was  rapidly  eclipsing 
his  instructor.      At  the  end  of  two 
years  he  had  painted  the  portrait  of 
an  elderly  female    servant,  which  is 
said  by  its  superiority  to  have  roused 
the  jealousy  of  his  master.      Acting 
under  the  irritation  of  envy  at  per- 
ceiving himself  outdone  by  his  scholar, 
he  is  alleged  to  have  dismissed  him  not 
long  afterwards  on  a  very  frivolous 
pretence.     He  had  served  an  appren- 
ticeship of  two  years  and  nine  months. 
The  Hudsons  of  the  day  could  teach 
him  nothing  further,  and  relying  on 
his  local  connections  he  set  up  at  Ply- 
mouth Dock,  where  before  January, 
1744,  r.e  had  painted  twenty  portraits, 
and   had   commissions   for  ten   more. 


In    December   of   that  year  he   was 
again  in  London.     His  time,  in  the  in- 
terval, had  not  been  well  spent.     He 
told  Malone  that  "  about  the  age  of 
nineteen  or  twenty  he   became  very 
careless  about  his  profession,  and  lived 
for  near  three  years  at  Plymouth,  in  a 
great  deal  of  dissipation."     The  age 
of  twenty   exactly   corresponds  with 
the  period  when  he  parted  with  Hud- 
son, and  became  his  own  master.     His 
first  taste  of  freedom  from  all  control, 
conjoined  with  his  love  of  sociality, 
naturally  drew  him  from  his  easel  to 
indulge  in  the  pleasures  of  companion- 
ship.    He  said  "  he  saw  his  error  in 
time,  and  sat  dowfi   seriously  to  his 
art  about   the   year    1743,   or   1744." 
This  reduces  the  season  of  idleness  to 
rather    less    than    eighteen    months. 
Hudson's  ill-will,  if  it  had  ever  exist- 
ed, was  of  short  duration.     When  his 
discarded  pupil  reappeared  in  London, 
and  opened  a  studio  at  the  close  of 
1744,  he  got  him  elected  into  a  club, 
"  composed  of  the  most  famous  men  in 
their  profession,"  which  was  a  recogni- 
tion of  his  right  to  take  immediate 
rank  with  them.      Samuel  Reynolds 
calls  the   conduct   "  exceeding  gener- 
ous," and  a  letter  to  Mr.  Cutcliffe,  on 
May  24,  1745,  furnishes  further  proof 
of  the  cordial  confidence  which  had 
survived  the  brief  misunderstanding. 
"  Joshua's  master  is  very  kind  to  him 
He  comes  to  visit  him  pretty  often, 
and  freely  tells  him  where  his  pictures 
are  faulty,  which  is  a  great  advantage, 
and  when  he  has  finished  anything  of 
his  own,  he  is  pleased  to  ask  Joshua's 
judgment,   which   is   a   great  honor." 
There  are  no  more  records  of  his  son's 
progress  from  the  kind,  simple,  elated 


172 


SIK  JOSHUA  REYNOLDS. 


jld  man.  He  died  on  Christmas  day, 
1746,  and  Joshua  once  more  withdrew 
from  London  and  took  a  house,  with 
his  two  unmarried  sisters,  at  Plymouth 
Dock. 

It  is  said  by  Malone  that  Eeynolds 
"  always  considered  the  disagreement 
which  induced  him  to  leave  Mr.  Hud- 
son as  a  very  fortunate  circumstance, 
since  by  this  means  he  was  led  to  de- 
viate from  the  tameness  and  insipidity 
of  his  master,  and  to  form  a  manner  of 
his  own."  The  change  was  not  imme- 
diate. His  works  for  some  time  were 
of  the  Hudson  school,  and  he  is  not 
known  to  have  produced  anything  in 
a  better  style  until  he  painted  the 
portraits  of  Captain  Hamilton,  and  the 
boy  engaged  in  reading,  in  1747. 
Whatever  may  have  been  the  exact 
period  of  the  change  in  .  Reynolds' s 
style,  Northcote  and  Leslie  agree  that 
the  hints  which  kindled  his  genius 
were  derived  from  the  works  of  Wil- 
liam Gandy,  an  itinerant  artist,  who  rov- 
ed through  Devonshire  and  Cornwall, 
and  died  about  the  time  when  Joshua 
was  born.  Lazy,  gluttonous,  improv- 
ident, and  irascible,  he  dashed  off 
likenesses  at  a  couple  of  guineas  a 
piece,  with  no  other  care  than  to  ob- 
tain with  as  little  trouble  as  possible 
the  money  which  would  purchase  him 
a  luxurious  meal.  "His  portraits," 
says  Northcote,  "  are  slight  and 
sketchy,  and  show  more  of  genius 
than  of  labor;  they,  indeed,  demon- 
strate facility,  feeling,  and  nice  obser- 
vation, as  far  as  concerns  the  head ; 
but  he  was  so  idle,  and  so  unambitious 
that  the  remainder  of  the  picture,  ex- 
cept sometimes  the  hand,  was  com- 
monly copied  from  some  print  after  Sir 


Godfrey  Knell er."  One  of  the  precepts 
of  Gandy  was  that  "  a  picture  ought 
to  have  a  richness  in  its  texture,  as  if 
the  colors  had  been  composed  of  cream 
or  cheese,  and  the  reverse  to  a  hard 
and  husky,  or  dry  manner."  The  re- 
mark was  repeated  to  Reynolds,  and 
how  largely  he  profited  by  it  is  appa- 
rent from  the  circumstance  that  it 
would  be  difficult  to  describe  more  ac- 
curately the  usual  surface  of  his  own 
paintings.  The  germ  of  his  distinctive 
qualities  may  be  clearly  discerned  in 
particular  specimens  of  Gandy's  works, 
but  these  merely  furnished  the  spark 
which  lighted  up  the  latent  powers  of 
a  far  greater  man.  When  once  the 
mind  of  Reynolds  was  released  from 
the  trammels  of  Hudson's  authority, 
he  looked  at  nature  for  himself,  and 
began  to  transfer  to  his  canvas  effects 
and  incidents  caught  fresh  from  life, 
and  portrayed  with  the  individuality 
of  his  charming  genius. 

In  April,  1749,  Commodore  Keppel 
put  into  Plymouth  on  his  way  to  take 
the  command  in  the  Mediterranean, 
and  paid  a  visit  to  Lord  Edgcumbe, 
who  was  one  of  the  local  patrons  of 
Reynolds.  The  young  painter  yearn- 
ed to  study  the  masterpieces  of  the 
world.  The  "  height  of  his  wishes  " 
was  to  visit  Rome,  and  at  the  request 
of  Lord  Edgcumbe  the  Commodore 
offered  him  a  passage  to  Italy.  They 
sailed  in  the  Centurion  on  May  llth, 
and  after  seeing  Lisbon,  Cadiz,  Gibral- 
tar, and  Algiers,  they  landed  at  Port 
Mahon  on  August  23d.  Reynolds  won 
his  way  wherever  he  went  by  his  ad- 
mirable qualities.  From  the  guest  he 
became  the  friend  of  Keppel,  and  at 
Minorca  General  Blakeney,  the  gov- 


SIR  JOSHUA  REYNOLDS. 


173 


ernor,  provided  him  with  quarters  free 
of  expense,  and  invited  him  to  live  at 
his  table.  During  his  stay  on  the 
island  he  met  with  a  serious  accident. 
His  horse  fell  with  him  over  a  preci- 
pice, his  face  was  much  bruised,  and 
his  upper  lip  was  injured  to  such  an 
extent  that  it  became  necessary  to  cut 
a  portion  of  it  away.  Nearly  all  the 
officers  on  the  station  availed  them- 
Belves  of  his  presence  to  get  their  por- 
traits painted,  and  he  remained  two  or 
three  months  among  them,  "  greatly  to 
the  improvement,"  says  Northcote, 
"  of  his  skill  and  fortune." 

In  December,  1749,  Reynolds  sailed 
from  Port  Mahon  to  Leghorn,  and  pro- 
ceeded by  way  of  Florence  to  Rome. 
He  was  at  last  in  the  presence  of  the 
finest  productions  of  Raphael,  and  to 
his  extreme  mortification  he  was  un- 
able to  relish  them.  Surprise  has  of- 
ten been  expressed  that  with  the  skill 
he  had  already  attained  he  should  have 
failed  to  appreciate  the  extraordinary 
qualities  o?  the  frescoes  at  the  Vati- 
can. A  remark  he  made  to  North- 
cote  explains  the  mystery.  "  Every 
painter,"  said  Reynolds,  "  has  some 
favorite  branch  of  the  art  which  he 
looks  for  in  a  picture ;  and,  in  propor- 
tion as  that  part  is  well  or  ill  executed, 
he  pronounces  his  opinion  upon  the 
whole.  One  artist  looks  for  coloring, 
another  for  drawing,  another  for  hand- 
ling; an  independent  spectator  looks 
for  expression."  He  himself  looked 
for  coloring,  or,  in  his  own  words, 
"  for  superficial  and  alluring  beauties," 
and  the  pictorial  effect  of  nature,  dig- 
nity and  grace  seemed  tame  and  in- 
sipid when  it  was  not  conjoined  with 
the  captivating  hues  of  the  Titans  and 


Correggios.  "I  felt  my  ignorance," 
he  says,  "  and  stood  abashed.  All  the 
indigested  notions  which  I  had  brought 
with  me  from  England  were  to  be  to 
tally  done  away  with  and  eradicated 
from  my  mind.  Notwithstanding  my 
disappointment  I  proceeded  to  copy 
some  of  those  excellent  works.  I 
viewed  them  again  and  again ;  I  even 
affected  to  feel  their  merits,  and  to  ad- 
mire them  more  than  I  really  did.  In 
a  short  time  a  new  taste  and  new  per- 
ceptions began  to  dawn  upon  me,  and 
I  was  convinced  that  I  had  originally 
formed  a  false  opinion  of  the  perfec- 
tion of  art,  and  that  this  great  painter 
was  well  entitled  to  the  high  rank 
which  he  holds  in  the  estimation  of  the 
world."  Thus  the  first  lesson  which 
Reynolds  learnt  in  Italy  proved  the 
supreme  importance  of  his  journey. 
He  had  greatly  enlarged  his  concep- 
tions, and  to  his  previous  aims  he  ad- 
ded a  fuller  insight  into  the  noblest 
class  of  effects.  His  delight  in  color, 
and  light  and  shade,  remained  undi- 
minished,  but  he  had  acquired  a  keen- 
er eye  for  those  severer  beauties  of 
form  and  expression,  which  character- 
ized what  has  often  been  fitly  called 
the  epic  of  art.  He  was  inspired 
above  all  by  the  sublime  creations  of 
Michael  Angelo.  "  I  was  let,"  he  says, 
in  one  of  his  Roman  note-books,  "  into 
the  Capella  Sistina  in  the  morning, 
and  remained  there  the  whole  day,  a 
great  part  of  which  I  spent  walking 
up  and  down  it  with  great  self-import- 
ance." 

He  paid  one  severe  penalty  for  the 
knowledge  he  had  gained.  While 
painting  in  the  Vatican  he  caught  a 
cold  which  left  him  deaf  for  life,  and 


174 


Slit  JOSHUA  REYNOLDS. 


obliged  him  in  company  to  use  a  trum- 
pet. In  conversation  with  an  indi- 
vidual, as  with  a  sitter,  where  the  talk 
,vas  exclusively  addressed  to  himself, 
and  there  were  no  contending  voices 
to  interfere  with  the  sound,  he  heard 
readily  without  artificial  aid. 

He  remained  at  Rome  for  two  years 
and  four  months.  He  departed  on 
May  3d,  1752,  and  proceeded  to  Flor- 
ence. Here  he  was  in  doubt  whether 
to  remain  a  little  longer  in  Italy  or  re- 
turn at  once  to  England.  The  motives 
for  prolonging  his  sojourn  prevailed. 
Reynolds  stayed  at  Florence  till  July 
4,  and  after  visiting  Bologna  and  Mo- 
dena  he  arrived  at  Venice  on  July  24. 
He  again  set  out  on  August  16,  having 
spent  but  three  weeks  in  the  head- 
quarters of  that  school  of  color,  which 
he  copied  and  rivalled.  His  craving 
to  return  to  England  was  increased  by 
a  circumstance  which  occurred  one 
night  at  the  opera-house  at  Venice. 
The  manager,  out  of  compliment  to 
the  English  part  of  the  audience,  or- 
dered the  band  to  play  a  popular  air 
which  was  heard  in  every  street  in 
London  at  the  time  when  Reynolds 
and  his  companions  left  home.  The 
recollections  the  simple  strain  conjured 
up  brought  the  tears  into  their  eyes. 
Reynolds  did  not  again  halt  above  a 
day  or  two  on  his  homeward  journey 
till  he  got  to  Paris,  where  he  remained 
a  month,  and  painted  a  beautiful  por- 
trait of  Mrs.  Chambers,  the  wife  of  the 
architect.  Between  Turin  and  the  Alps 
he  fell  in  with  Hudson,  who,  for  the 
sake  of  appearances,  had  determined 
to  visit  Rome.  He  only  stayed  -a 
couple  of  days.  He  was  back  at 
Paris  before  Reynolds  had  gone  away, 


and  they  returned  together  to   Eng 
land. 

Reynolds  reached  London  Octobei 
16th,  1752.  His  health  was  impaired, 
and  he  went  to  Plymouth  for  a  three 
months'  holiday.  He  had  no  sooner 
recovered  than  he  set  off  for  London, 
and  hired  a  studio  in  St.  Martin's 
Lane.  He  had  brought  with  him  from 
Rome  an  Italian  boy  named  Marchi, 
and  he  exhibited  a  head  of  this  lad  in 
a  Turkish  turban,  "richly  painted," 
says  Northcote,  "something  in  the 
style  of  Rembrandt."  Ellis,  a  fash- 
ionable manufacturer"  of  portraits,  ex- 
claimed, when  he  saw  it,  "Ah!  Rey- 
nold, this  will  never  answer :  why,  you 
don't  paint  in  the  least  degree  in  the 
manner  of  Kneller."  Reynolds  denied 
that  Kneller  was  the  standard  of  per- 
fection; and  Ellis,  astonished  and  en- 
raged at  the  heresy,  rushed  from  the 
room,  calling  out  as  he  went,  "  Shake- 
speare in  poetry,  and  Kneller  in  paint- 
ing, damme!"  "It  is  well  known," 
says  Mason,  the  poet,  "that  when  young 
Reynolds  returned  from  his  studies  in 
Italy,  Lord  Edgcumbe  persuaded  many 
of  the  first  nobility  to  sit  to  him  for 
their  pictures,  and  he  very  judiciously 
applied  to  such  of  them  as  had  the 
strongest  features,  and  whose  likeness, 
therefore,  it  was  the  easiest  to  hit. 
Amongst  those  personages  were  the 
old  Dukes  of  Devonshire  and  Grafton, 
and  of  these  the  young  artist  made 
portraits,  not  only  expressive  of  their 
countenances,  but  of  their  figures,  and 
this  in  a  manner  so  novel,  simple,  and 
natural,  yet  withal  so  dignified,  as  pro- 
cured him  general  applause,  and  set 
him  in  a  moment  above  his  old  master 
Hudson."  A  full-length  portrait  of 


SIR  JOSHUA  REYNOLDS. 


175 


his  friend  Keppel  speedily  followed, 
and  greatly  increased  his  reputation. 

His  sister  Frances,  who  was  six  years 
younger  than  himself,  and  who  died 
unmarried  in  1807,  removed  with  him 
to  London,  and  kept  his  house  for  sev- 
eral years.  She  excelled  in  painting 
miniatures,  and  appears  at  one  time  to 
have  practiced  the  art  professionally, 
for  Johnson,  writing  of  her  to  Langton, 
in  January,  1759,  says,  "Miss  is  much 
employed  in  miniatures."  She  some- 
times attempted  large  pictures  in  oil, 
which  were  so  exceedingly  bad  that 
her  brother  remarked  jestingly,  "  that 
they  made  other  people  laugh,  and  him 
cry." 

Before  the  close  of  1753,  the  increas- 
ing reputation  of  Reynolds  enabled 
him  to  raise  his  price  to  the  sum 
charged  by  Hudson,  and  to  exchange 
his  quarters  in  St.  Martin's  Lane  for  a 
house  in  Great  Newport  Street.  He  had 
lived  with  strict  economy  abroad,  for 
he  once  said  that  he  knew  from  expe- 
rience that  £50  a-year-was  enough  for 
a  student  at  Rome.  A  part  of  the 
money  was  furnished  by  his  married 
sisters,  Mrs.  Palmer  and  Mrs.  Johnson, 
and  he  must  have  been  indebted  to  re- 
lations or  friends  for  the  capital  which 
started  him  in  London.  His  immedi- 
ate success  placed  him  at  once  above 
pecuniary  care.  His  terms  for  a  head 
were  three  guineas  before  he  went  to 
Italy,  five  when  he  set  up  in  St.  Mar- 
tin's Lane,  and  twelve  when  he  re- 
moved to  Newport  Street.  A  half- 
xength  was  double  the  price  of  a  head, 
and  a  full-length  double  the  price  of  a 
half-length.  He  welcomed  comments 
from  every  quarter,  and  scouted  the 
notion  that  none  but  painters  could 


judge  of  pictures.  "The  only  opin- 
ions," he  said,  "  of  which  no  use  can  be 
made  are  those  of  half-learned  connois- 
seurs, who  have  quitted  nature  and 
have  not  acquired  art." 

Likeness  of  feature  was  the  least 
achievement  of  Reynolds.  His  mastei 
faculty  was  the  power  of  painting  the 
qualities  of  the  sitter  —  the  power 
which,  along  with  the  lineaments  of 
Thurlow,  could  depict  his  sapience 
and  temper.  "Sir  Joshua  dived," 
says  Malone,  "into  the  minds  and 
habits,  and  manners  of  those  who  sat 
to  him,  and  accordingly  the  majority 
of  his  portraits  are  so  appropriate 
and  characteristic,  that  the  many  il- 
lustrious persons  whom  he  has  deline- 
ated will  be  almost  as  well  known  to 
posterity  as  if  they  had  seen  and  con- 
versed with  them."  Northcote,  who 
has  stamped  this  passage  with  his  ap- 
proval, adds  his  own  opinion  that  in 
character  the  portraits  of  Reynolds 
surpassed  those  of  every  painter  in  the 
world.  His  range  was  unlimited.  He 
was  great  in  rendering  the  traits  of  all 
ages,  temperaments,  and  callings — men 
and  women,  boys  and  girls,  soldiers 
and  men  of  letters,  the  gay  and  the 
thoughtful,  the  vicious  and  the  good. 
Whatever  may  be  the  look  it  has  the 
air  of  being  native  and  spontaneous. 
Amid  the  vast  variety  of  expression 
in  his  female  heads,  the  most  frequent 
is  some  form  of  pensive  tenderness, 
which  was  doubtless  the  quality  that 
usually  preponderated  in  the  originals 
His  finest  works  of  this  kind  are  an 
absolute  impersonation  of  all  that  is 
gentlest  and  purest  in  womankind. 
He  appears  too  in  his  glory  in  his  rep- 
resentations  of  children.  In  spite  of 


176 


SIR  JOSHUA  REYNOLDS. 


the  host  of  affections  which  gather 
round  the  young,  the  distinctiveness 
of  their  ways,  and  the  attractiveness 
of  nature  fresh  and  unsophisticated, 
this  singularly  winning  and  pictures- 
que stage  of  life  had  been  almost  over- 
looked by  preceding  masters.  The 
painters  of.  religious  subjects  repre- 
sented children  as  seraphic  beings,  and 
the  painters  of  portraits  represented 
them  with  the  formal  air  which  they 
wore  when  they  sat  for  their  pictures. 
The  happy  idea  occurred  to  Reynolds 
of  representing  them  as  they  are  seen 
in  their  daily  doings,  when  animated 
by  the  emotions  which  typify  their 
lives  to  us.  The  fondest  parent  could 
not  observe  them  more  closely,  or  take 
a  keener  delight  in  their  dawning 
traits  and  engaging  simplicity.  He 
said,  "that  all  their  gestures  were 
graceful,  and  that  the  reign  of  distor- 
tion and  unnatural  attitudes  com- 
menced with  the  dancing  master." 
He  has  recorded  on  canvas  the  whole 
round  of  boyish  and  girlish  existence. 
He  presents  them  to  us  in  their  games, 
their  pursuits,  their  glee,  and  their 
gravity.  Their  archness  and  their  art- 
lessness,  their  spirit  and  their  shy- 
ness, the  seriousness  with  which  they 
engage  in  their  little  occupations,  and 
the  sweet  and  holy  innocence  which  is 
common  to  the  majority  of  the  young, 
are  all  embodied  with  unrivalled  felic- 
ity. No  class  of  his  works  abounds 
equally  with  examples  of  that  tran- 
sient expression  which,  he  said,  "  lasts 
less  than  a  moment,  and  must  be 
painted  in  as  little  time."  He  called 
it  "shooting  flying,"  and  considered 
that  the  power  of  fixing  these  passing 
emotions  was  "the  greatest  effort  of 


the  art."  Nor  did  his  hand  lose  its 
cunning  in  passing  from  the  softest 
graces  of  women  and  children  to  the 
attributes  of  men.  His  male  heads 
redound  with  masculine  vigor,  and  are 
discriminated  by  the  strongest  traits 
of  individuality.  "Sir  Joshua's  por- 
traits," said  Northcote  to  Hazlitt, 
"  have  always  that  determined  air  and 
character,  that  you  know  what  to  think 
of  them,  as  if  you  had  seen  them  en- 
gaged in  the  most  decided  action." 

A  memorable  event  in  the  life  of 
Reynolds  occurred  during  his  residence 
in  Great  Newport  Street.  The  Miss 
Cotterells,  who  lived  opposite  to  him, 
were  acquainted  with  Johnson.  Rey- 
nolds met  him  at  their  house  in  1753 
or  1754,  and  a  lasting  friendship  en- 
sued. The  intimacy  imparted  a  new 
impulse  to  the  active  intellect  of  the 
painter.  "  Whatever  merit,"  he  wrote 
towards  the  close  of  his  career,  "  my 
Discourses  have,  must  be  imputed,  in 
a  great  measure,  to  the  education 
which  I  may  be  said  to  have  had  un- 
der Dr.  Johnson.  I  do  not  mean  to 
say,  though  it  certainly  would  be  to 
their  credit  if  I  could  say  it  with  truth, 
that  he  contributed  even  a  single  sen- 
timent to  them,  but  he  qualified  my 
mind  to  think  justly.  No  man  had, 
like  him,  the  faculty  of  teaching  infe- 
rior minds  the  art  of  thinking.  The 
observations  which  he  made  on  poetry, 
on  life,  and  on  everything  about  us,  I 
applied  to  our  art."  "  Nothing,"  said 
Burke,  "  showed  more  the  greatness  of 
Sir  Joshua's  parts  than  his  taking  ad- 
vantage of  the  writings  and  conversa- 
tion of  Johnson,  and  making  some  ap 
plication  of  them  to  his  profession, 
when  Johnson  neither  understood,  noi 


SIE  JOSHUA   REYNOLDS. 


177 


desired   to   understand,   anything    of 
painting." 

In  1758,  Reynolds  raised  his  prices 
to  twenty,  forty,  and  eighty  guineas 
for  a  head,  half-length,  and  whole- 
length.  From  the  unusual  number  of 
the  works  he  threw  off,  Northcote  says 
that  his  profession  was  more  lucrative 
at  this  period  than  when  his  charges 
became  higher.  The  celerity  with 
which  he  turned  out  a  picture  was  ex- 
traordinary. Mr.  Taylor  finds  from 
his  pocket-books  that  in  1758  he  had 
one  hundred  and  fifty-nine  sitters, 
which  is  at  the  rate  of  rather  more 
than  a  portrait  to  every  two  days. 
His  facility  was  not  even  then  at  its 
height.  "  He  took,"  said  Fuseli,  "  in- 
finite pains  at  first  to  finish  his  work, 
but  afterwards,  when  he  had  acquired 
a  greater  readiness  of  hand  he  dashed 
on  with  his  brush."  The  freedom  and 
boldness  of  his  execution  increased  for 
many  years  to  come.  Here  and  there 
we  are  informed  of  the  time  he  be- 
stowed upon  particular  productions. 
In  1762  he  painted  in  a  week  the  cele- 
brated picture  of  Garrick  between  Tra-. 
gedy  and  Comedy,  and  in  1773  he  com- 
pleted the  head  of  Beattie  and  sketched 
the  rest  of  the  figure,  in  a  single  sit- 
ting of  five  hours.  He  did  not  con- 
sider it  a  disadvantage  to  be  hurried, 
but  held  that  the  concentration  of  ef- 
fort made  amends  for  more  leisurely 
workmanship.  The  rapid  succession 
with  which  his  portraits  followed  each 
other  renders  more  surprising  the  va- 
riety of  his  designs,  which  would  be 
supposed  to  have  demanded  deliberate 
thought.  In  the  formal  parts  he  could 
sail  in  the  help  of  assistants.  He  had 
several  drapery  men  in  his  employ,  and 
23 


such  was  the  advantage  of  their  me- 
chanic aid,  that  Northcote  had  heard 
him  observe  that  no  one  ever  acquired 
a  fortune  by  his  own  hands  alone.  In 
1762  he  was  making,  as  Johnson  wrote 
word  to  Baretti,  six  thousand  a  year, 
and  once,  when  lamenting  the  inter- 
ruptions from  idle  visitors,  he  dropped 
the  remark,  "  Those  people  do  not  con- 
sider that  my  time  is  worth  five  gui- 
neas an  hour." 

The  influx  of  riches  did  not  relax  his 
exertions,  for  his  art  was  his  passion. 
Till  he  laid  aside  his  pencil  for  ever  he 
was  constant  to  his  painting-room  from 
ten  to  four,  and  he  himself  says  that 
he  went  on  "  laboring  as  hard  as  a  me- 
chanic working  for  his  bread."  He 
was  sometimes  enticed  into  paying  a 
visit  to  a  country  seat,  and  he  always 
returned  from  the  relaxation  and  lux- 
uries with  the  feeling  that  "he  had 
been  kept  from  his  natural  food."  His 
speedy  attainment  to  wealth  and  fame 
had  no  effect  in  corrupting  his  sim- 
plicity. "There  goes  a  man,"  said 
Johnson,  "  not  to  be  spoiled  by  pros- 
perity ; "  and  Burke  records  that  "  his 
native  humility,  modesty,  and  candor 
never  forsook  him." 

Reynolds  changed  his  quarters  in 
1760,  having  purchased  a  forty-seven 
years'  lease  of  a  house  in  Leicester- 
square  for  £1650.  He  expended  £1500 
more  in  building  a  picture  gallery  "  for 
the  exhibition  of  his  works,"  and  paint 
ing-rooms  for  himself,  his  pupils,  and 
his  assistants.  The  outlay  absorbed 
the  greater  part  of  his  savings.  His 
enlarged  establishment  included  a  cha- 
riot with  carving  and  gilding  on  the 
wheels,  and  allegorical  figures  of  the 
seasons  on  the  panels.  His  sister  ob 


178 


SIR  JOSHUA  REYNOLDS. 


jected  that  it  was  too  showy,  and  her 
brother  replied,  "What!  would  you 
have  one  like  an  apothecary's  car- 
riage?" He  had  little  occasion  for  a 
carriage  himself,  and  much  to  the 
annoyance  of  Miss  Reynolds,  who  was 
exceedingly  shy  and  shrunk  from  the 
notice  which  the  equipage  attracted, 
he  insisted  that  she  should  use  it.  He 
gave  a  ball  on  taking  possession  of  his 
house.  He  was  not  much  addicted  to 
mere  gaiety,  but  no  man  had  a  keener 
zest  for  mental  intercourse.  "  He  was 
as  fond  of  London,"  says  Malone,  "  as 
Dr.  Johnson,  always  maintaining  that 
it  was  the  only  place  in  England  where 
a  pleasant  society  might  be  found."  He 
later  erected  a  villa  on  Richmond  Hill, 
and  often  spent  a  summer  evening  there 
with  his  friends ;  but  notwithstanding 
his  fine  sense  of  the  beauties  of  nature, 
he  rarely  remained  a  night.  He  used 
to  say  "that  the  human  face  was  his 
landscape,"  and  he  would  not  sacrifice 
the  stir  of  London  for  rural  scenes  and 
fresh  air.  He  belonged  to  various  so- 
cial clubs,  he  was  a  frequent  diner  out, 
and  every  week  he  gave  one  or  more 
dinners  himself. 

An  important  measure,  which  is  said 
by  Barry  to  have  originated  with  Rey- 
nolds, was  adopted  in  1760.  The  paint- 
ers commenced  an  annual  exhibition, 
out  of  which  after  several  years  of  ex- 
periment, grew  the  incorporated  Royal 
Academy,  of  which,  by  common  con- 
sent, Reynolds  was  appointed  presi- 
dent. To  confer  dignity  on  his  office  he 
was  knighted,  which  occasioned  much 
rejoicing  among  his  friends.  Burke  de- 
clared that  there  was  a  natural  fitness 
in  his  name  for  the  title,  and  Johnson, 
after  ten  3  ears'  abstinence  from  wine, 


drank  a  glass  to  his  health  on  the  oc 
casion. 

Reynolds  delivered  a  discourse  at 
the  opening  of  the  Academy  in  Janu- 
ary, 1769.  This  was  followed  by 
a  second  in  December,  when  he  dis- 
tributed the  prizes.  The  plan  of  the 
academy  comprised  a  school  for  train- 
ing artists,  and  a  gold  medal  was  an- 
nually  to  be  conferred  upon  the  student 
who  produced  the  best  attempt  at  an 
historical  picture.  The  president  felt 
that  formal  compliments  would  become 
flat  by  repetition,  and  he  determined  to 
seize  the  opportunity  to  put  beginners 
in  possession  of  the  lessons  he  had 
learned  by  years  of  observation,  reflec- 
tion, and  practice.  Talent  was  of  slow- 
er growth  than  had  been  anticipated, 
and  after  1772  the  gold  medal  was  re- 
served for  alternate  years,  when  the 
discourses  of  the  president  became  bi- 
ennial also.  From  the  long  intervals 
between  them  he  could  not  enter  upon 
a  systematic  course  of  instruction ;  but 
more  methodical  lecturers  have  not  had 
equal  success  in  placing  the  student  up- 
on the  vantage  ground  occupied  by  the 
master.  He  expatiated  upon  the  quali- 
ties which  go  to  form  a  fine  picture — 
he  described  the  various  schools  of 
painting,  with  the  merits  and  defects 
of  each — he  specified  the  characteris- 
tics of  the  several  masters,  showing 
what  was  to  be  imitated  and  what  to 
be  avoided — and  he  detailed  to  learn- 
ers the  modes  of  proceeding  which 
would  best  enable  them  to  appropriate 
the  beauties  of  their  forerunners.  His 
style  was  clear  and  chaste,  and  had  the 
elements  of  an  elegance  which  proved 
that  if  he  had  not  been  a  celebrated 
painter  he  had  it  in  his  power  to  become 


SIR    JOSHUA   REYNOLDS. 


17& 


a  celebrated  author.  The  excellence 
of  the  composition  gave  rise  to  a  report 
that  the  Discourses  were  the  work  of 
Johnson  or  Burke.  Malone  and  North- 
cote  have  refuted  a  charge  which  must 
appear  ridiculous  to  any  one  who  has 
the  least  acquaintance  with  the  style 
of  the  pretended  authors.  No  refuta- 
tion was  required.  An  accusation 
which  is  unsupported  by  a  tittle  of 
trustworthy  evidence  is  simply  slander. 

He  exhibited  a  large  historical  pic- 
ture in  1779.  This  was  the  Nativity, 
which  he  painted  as  a  design  for  the 
chapel  window  at  New  College.  The 
original  was  burnt  at  Belvoir  Castle, 
and  was  a  master-piece  of  color.  Sir 
Joshua  borrowed  from  Correggio  the 
idea  of  making  the  Saviour  the  source 
of  a  supernatural  light,  "  but  his  exe- 
cution," says  Northcote,  "  both  in  man- 
ner arid  circumstance  gave  it  the  effect 
of  novelty." 

The  University  of  Oxford  offered  its 
tribute  to  the  illustrious  president  by 
conferring  on  him,  in  1773,  the  degree 
of  D.C.L.  He  frequently  painted  him- 
self afterwards  in  his  academical  dress, 
partly,  perhaps,  for  its  pictorial  effect, 
and  partly  because  he  prized  honorary 
titles.  "  Distinction,"  he  said,  "  is  what 
we  all  seek  after;  and  the  world  does 
set  a  value  on  them,  and  I  go  with  the 
great  stream  of  life."  When  Ferguson, 
the  self-educated  astronomer,  was  elec- 
ted a  fellow  of  the  Royal,  Society,  he 
exclaimed,  "  Ah !  I  do  not  want  honor ; 
I  want  bread."  Reynolds  replied  that, 
"  to  obtain  honors  was  the  means  to  ob- 
tain bread :"  which  is  commonly  true 
when  the  badge  is  held  in  estimation 
by  the  public,  and  he  who  receives  it 
has  proportionate  merit.  A  compli- 


ment which  Sir  Joshua  rated  higher 
than  his  degree  was  paid  him  the  same 
year.  He  was  chosen  Mayor  of  Plymp- 
ton.  He  told  the  king,  who  met  him 
walking  in  Richmond  Gardens,  that  it 
gave  him  more  pleasure  than  any  other 
honor  he  had  ever  received.  As  he  ut- 
tered the  words  he  remembered  his 
knighthood,  and  added,  "  except  that 
which  your  majesty  was  pleased  to  be- 
stow upon  me."  On  his  accession  to 
the  mayoralty,  Reynolds  presented  his 
portrait  to  the  corporation,  and  request- 
ed that  it  might  be  hung  in  a  good  sit- 
uation. He  was  informed  in  reply  that 
it  had  been  put  between  two  old  pic- 
tures, which  acted  as  a  foil,  and  set  it 
off  to  great  advantage.  The  two  old 
pictures  were  portraits  of  naval  officers 
which  he  himself  had  painted  before  he 
went  to  Italy  Wilkie,  who  saw  them 
in  1809,  said  that "  for  composition  they 
were  as  fine  as  anything  he  ever  did 
afterwards." 

From  July  24th  to  September  16th, 
1 781,Reynolds  was  absent  from  London 
on  a  tour  through  Holland  and  the  Neth- 
erlands. His  admirable  criticisms  on 
the  Dutch  and  Flemish  painters  were 
mostly  written  during  this  journey. 
He  was  fascinated  by  the  gorgeous 
hues  of  Rubens,  and  on  his  return  he 
thought  the  coloring  of  his  own  pic. 
tures  deficient  in  force.  He  made  an- 
other excursion  into  the  Low  Countries 
in  1783,  when  the  works  of  Rubens  ap- 
peared less  brilliant  than  before.  In 
1784  Reynolds  exhibited  his  Mrs.  Sid- 
dons  as  the  Tragic  Muse,  which  was 
said  by  Barry  to  be  "  both  for  the  ideal 
and  execution  the  finest  picture,  per- 
haps, of  the  kind  in  the  world,"  and 
whic/h  Lawrence  pronounced  to  be  in. 


180 


SIR  JOSHUA  REYNOLDS. 


dubitably  the   finest  female   portrait 
every  painted. 

The  days  of  Reynolds  continued  to 
flow  on  with  a  prosperity  which  seem- 
ed almost  exempt  from  the  common 
casualties  of  life.  With  the  exception 
of  his  slight  paralytic  attack,  in  1782, 
he  had  been  hardly  acquainted  with 
illness.  He  was  congratulated  at  the 
age  of  sixty-six  on  his  healthy  and 
youthful  appearance,  and  he  replied 
that  he  felt  as  he  looked.  Just  at 
this  time  the  scene  suddenly  chang- 
ed. In  July,  1789,  his  left  eye  became 
affected  by  gutta  serena,  and  in  a  few 
weeks  his  sight  had  perished.  There 
was  reason  to  believe  that  the  right 
eye  was  ready  to  give  way,  and  the 
hazard  of  exerting  it  compelled  Rey- 
nolds to  abandon  his  profession.  Artists 
had  usually  painted  sitting  till  Rey-- 
nolds  introduced  the  custom  of  paint- 
ing standing.  Hie  object  in  the  change 
was  that  he  might  be  able  to  see  the 
effect  of  his  work  by  stepping  back- 
wards. Malone  supposed  that  the 
habit  had  answered  the  additional  end 
of  protecting  Reynolds  from  the  evils 
;>f  a  sedentary  calling.  His  sedentary 
life,  however,  was  probably  the  cause 
of  his  malady,  which  was  subsequently 
found  to  be  associated  with  derange- 
ment of  the  liver.  He  was  neither  a 
tippler  nor  a  glutton,  but  he  ate  and 
drank  freely,  while  he  took  little  exer- 
cise beyond  what  the  practice  of  his 
art  afforded.  His  excellent  consti- 
tution had  been  slowly  gathering  the 
seeds  of  disease,  and  when  the  crisis 
arrived  the  mischief  had  proceeded 
too  far  to  be  checked. 

"  In  the  fifteen  years,"  says  Malone, 
'  during  which  I  had  the  pleasure  of 


living  with  Sir  Joshua  on  terms  of 
great  intimacy,  he  appeared  to  me  the 
happiest  man  I  had  ever  known.' 
Boswell  shared  the  impression,  ana 
Johnson  quoted  him  as  an  instance  of 
a  thinking  person  who  was  never 
troubled  with  melancholy,  but  was 
the  same  all  the  year  round.  He  was 
now  deprived  of  his  life-long  occupa- 
tion in  a  moment.  He  had  early  adop- 
ted the  maxim  that  "  the  great  princi- 
ple of  being  happy  was  not  to  be  af 
fected  by  small  things."  He  showed 
in  his  closing  days  that  he  could  ap- 
ply the  principle  under  grievous  afflic- 
tion. He  made  the  most  of  the  re- 
sources which  remained  to  him.  He 
looked  with  the  old  enthusiasm  at  the 
master-pieces  in  his  gallery,  he  occa- 
sionally cleaned  and  touched  a  dam 
aged  picture,  and  he  found  some  occu- 
pation in  the  business  of  the  academy. 
Mr.  Leslie  remarks  that  his  fondness 
for  birds  appeared  by  the  manner  in 
which  he  introduced  them  into  his 
pictures,  and  he  solaced  part  of  his 
weary  leisure  with  a  little  bird  he  had 
tamed.  His  favorite  flew  away,  and 
he  wandered  for  hours  round  Leices- 
ter Square  in  the  fruitless  hope  of  re- 
claiming it.  He  was  fortunate  in  his 
domestic  circumstances.  When  his  sis- 
ter left  his  house  he  had  two  Miss  Pal- 
mers, his  nieces,  for  inmates.  One  had 
since  become  Mrs.  Gwatkin ;  the  other, 
afterwards  Marchioness  of  Thomond, 
remained  to  tend  upon  him  with  as- 
siduous affection.  His  friends  gather- 
ed round  him,  and  strove  to  beguile 
the  tedium  of  his  existence.  He  had 
all  the  amusement  which  could  be  de- 
rived from  dinners,  conversation,  whist, 
and  country  visits.  To  some  his  social 


SIE  JOSHUA    REYNOLDS. 


181 


ease  might  seem  an  enviable  lot,  but  a 
perpetual  holiday  was  a  heavy  burthen 
to  a  man  whose  profession  had  been 
his  pleasure  for  fifty  years. 

He  delivered  his  final  Discourse  on 
Dec.  10th,  1790,  when  he  informed  his 
auditors  that  "  his  age,  and  his  infirmi- 
ties still  more  than  his  age,"  would 
probably  never  permit  him  to  address 
them  again.  His  lecture  was  chiefly 
devoted  to  the  mighty  master  from 
whom  he  had  derived  in  his  youth  his 
highest  inspiration,  and  he  wound  up 
with  saying,  that  the  last  words  he 
wished  to  pronounce  from  the  chair  of 
the  academy  was  the  name  of  Michael 
Angelo. 

His  disorders  made  rapid  progress. 
Miss  Burney  saw  him  in  July,  1791, 
when  he  was  greatly  dejected  by  the 
apprehension  that  the  failing  sight  of 
the  right  eye  would  soon  consign  him 
to  total  darkness.  The  enormous  en- 
largement of  his  liver,  which  was  over- 
looked by  his  physicians,  was  the  secret 
cause  of  a  deeper  melancholy.  His 
wonted  cheerfulness  forsook  him,  and 
his  Mends  could  no  longer  dissipate 
his  abiding  despondency.  In  Decem- 
ber he  was  aware  that  death  was  ap- 
proaching. A  friend  tried  to  comfort 
him  with  the  hope  of  returning  health, 
and  he  answered,  "I  know  that  all 

things  on  earth  must  have  an  end,  and 

. 
I  have  come  to  mine."    His  composure 

returned  when  he  became  sensible  that 
his  departure  was  at  hand.  "  Nothing," 
wrote  Burke  on  Jan.  26th,  1792,  "can 
equal  the  tranquility  with  which  he 
views  his  end.  He  congratulates  him- 
self on  it  as  a  happy  conclusion  to  a 
happy  life."  Enthusiasm  for  his  art 


had  enticed  him  in  his  prosperity  into 
a  partial  neglect  of  his  religious  duties. 
His  sister,  Mrs.  Johnson,  had  earnestly 
remonstrated  with  him  for  painting  on 
Sundays ;  and  the  last  request  of  his 
dying  friend,  Dr.  Johnson,  was  that  he 
would  give  up  his  Sunday  painting 
and  read  his  Bible.  But  though  he 
sometimes  relaxed  his  strictness,  his 
reverence  remained.  "  All  this  excel 
lence,"  he  said,  in  his  notice  of  Moser, 
the  keeper  of  the  Royal  Academy, "  had 
a  firm  foundation.  He  was  a  man  of 
sincere  and  ardent  piety,  and  has  left 
an  illustrious  example  of  the  exactness 
with  which  the  subordinate  duties  may 
be  expected  to  be  discharged  by  him 
whose  first  care  is  to  please  God." 
Such  was  the  creed  of  Reynolds  •  in 
1783 ;  and,  with  his  simple  mind  and 
sweet  disposition,  we  might  be  sure 
that  he  had  never  relinquished  the 
faith  in  which  he  had  been  trained 
by  his  father.  "  He  had  from  the  be- 
ginning of  his  malady,"  said  Burke, 
"a  distinct  view  of  his  dissolution," 
and  the  peaceful  hope  with  which 
he  looked  forward  to  the  consumma- 
tion continued  with  him  to  the  last. 
He  died  on  the  evening  of  Feb.  23d, 
1792. 

He  had  requested  that  he  might  be 
buried,  without  expense,  in  St.  Paul's 
cathedral.  Burke  and  the  other  exec- 
utors were  of  opinion  that  the  brilliant 
era  he  had  created  in  art  demanded  a 
public  funeral.  His  body  was  remov- 
ed to  the  academy  at  Somerset  House, 
and  on  Saturday,  March  3d,  a  long  pro- 
cession of  men  of  eminence  and  rank 
followed  the  remains  of  the  great  anc 
good  academy  president  to  the  tomb. 


MARTHA     WASHINGTON 


name  of  Washington  rarely 
-L  suggests  to  an  American  aught 
but  the  patriot  hero,  or  the  grave  and 
dignified  statesman  and  father  of  his 
country.  Washington  seems  to  be  es- 
sentially a  part  and  parcel  of  the  his- 
tory of  our  native  land.  We  think  of 
him  usually  as  displaying  those  noble, 
manly  qualities  of  head  and  heart  for 
which  he  was  distinguished;  and  we 
are  apt  to  regard  him  so  constantly  as 
the  great  leader  in  the  Revolution,  as 
the  presiding  officer  of  that  band  of 
patriots  and  statesmen  who  framed  the 
Constitution  of  the  United  States,  as 
the  first  president  under  the  Constitu- 
tion in  its  most  critical  of  all  periods, 
and  as  the  venerable  sage  and  coun- 
sellor after  his  retirement  from  public 
life,  that  he  hardly  appears  to  have 
been  at  any  time  young,  or  in  any  wise 
a  partaker  of  the  ordinary  feelings, 
hopes  and  aspirations  of  our  youthful 
common  humanity. 

It  is  quite  a  mistake,  however,  to 
look  upon  our  pater  patrice  in  this 
light  alone.  Washington,  it  is  well 
to  remember,  was  once  a  boy  like  other 
boys,  full  of  feeling  which  belongs 
to  that  age,  a  boy  of  excellent  common 
aense,  and  not  without  high  and  worthy 

(183) 


aims  in  life.  And  more  than  this,  as 
we  may  here  appropriately  state, Wash- 
ington during  his  boyhood  was  so  sore- 
ly smitten  with  the  charms  of  a  "low- 
land beauty,"  that  he  went  through  all 
the  heats  and  colds,  the  elevations  of 
hope  and  the  sinkings  of  despair,  pe- 
culiar to  youthful  love,  both  before 
and  since  his  time. 

Who  would  think  it  ?  The  grave, 
reserved,  almost  stern  warrior  and 
sage,  whose  self-control  was  nearly 
perfect,  was,  underneath,  all  alive  with 
quick  impulses,  and  peculiarly  sen 
sible  to  female  beauty  and  attractive 
ness.  Hardly  had  he  entered  upon  his 
career  as  a  man,  and  begun  to  be  a 
lover  of  Mars  and  the  sterner  du- 
ties of  the  field,  when  he  was  smitten 
again  with  the  tender  passion,  and  his 
beating  heart  palpitated  under  the  be- 
witching influence  of  a  beautiful  maid- 
en of  New  York.  This  was  Miss  Mary 
Philipse,  sister  of  Mrs.  Beverley  Robin- 
son,  who  was  living  at  the  time  in  the 
city  of  New  York.  Washington  was 
at  the  impressible  age  of  twenty-three, 
and  it  is  reported  that  he  formally 
asked  the  lady's  hand  and  was  refused, 
But  the  report  may  reasonably  be 
doubted.  Washington,  though  a  hero 


MAETHA  WASHINGTON. 


185 


with  the  progress  of  affairs,  and  re- 
solved, long  before  the  actual  struggle 
of  arms  commenced,  to  devote  his  life 
and  fortune  to  the  support  of  the 
liberties  of  his  native  country. 

In  this  sacrifice  to  his  sense  of  duty, 
Martha  Washington  was  his  counsel- 
lor and  helper.  No  merely  womanly 
feeling  stood  in  the  way,  although 
the  result  must  be  separation  from  him  ; 
her  home  virtually  broken  up ;  her  mind 
and  heart  kept  constantly  in  a  state  of 
uncertainty  and  excitement,  and  her  per- 
sonal comfort  and  enjoyment  sacrificed 
to  the  exigencies  of  the  time.  We 
do  not  find  that  she  ever  interposed 
any  obstacles.  So  far  from  this,  it  is 
plain  that  she  not  only  acquiesced 
cheerfully  and  pleasantly  in  what  was 
perhaps  inevitable,  but  she  also  helped 
to  encourage  and  nerve  and  sustain 
her  husband  in  that  which  was  plainly 
the  path  of  duty. 

The  appeal  to  arms  had  come  be- 
yond all  possibility  of  further  evasion. 
Blood  had  been  shed  at  Lexington ; 
the  whole  country  was  roused ;  the 
battle  of  Bunker's  Hill  took  place  in 
June,  1774;  and  only  a  few  days  after, 
and  before  the  news  had  reached  Phil- 
adelphia, the  Continental  Congress  had 
Appointed  Washington  to  the  high  and 
responsible  post  of  Commander-in-chief. 
In  accepting  this  position  Washington 
was  by  no  means  insensible  -  to  the  ef- 
fect which  it  must  produce  upon  his 
beloved  wife.  In  a  letter  to  her  at 
this  date  he  writes,  in  a  tender  and 
manly  tone,  worthy,  v.  e  think,  of  them 
both,  "  You  may  believe  me,  when  I 
assure  you,  in  the  most  solemn  man- 
ner, that,  so  far  from  seeldng  this  ap- 
pointment, I  have  used  every  endeavor 


in  my  power  to  avoid  it,  not  only  from 
my  unwillingness  to  part  with  you 
and  the  family,  but  from  a  concious- 
ness  of  its  being  a  trust  too  great  for 
my  capacity ;  and  I  should  enjoy  more 
real  happiness  in  one  month  with  you 
at  home,  than  I  have  the  most  distant 
prospect  of  finding  abioad,  if  my  stay 
were  to  be  seven  times  seven  years. 
But  as  it  has  been  a  kind  of  destiny 
that  has  thrown  me  upon  this  service, 
I  shall  hope  that  my  undertaking  it  is 
designed  to  answer  some  good  pur- 
pose  I  shall  rely  con- 
fidently on  that  Providence  which  has 
heretofore  preserved  and  been  bounti- 
ful to  me,  not  doubting  but  that  I 
shall  return  safe  to  you  in  the  fall.  1 
shall  feel  no  toil  or  danger  of  the  cam- 
paign ;  my  unhappiness  will  flow  from 
the  uneasiness  I  know  you  will  feel 
from  being  left  alone.  I  therefore  beg 
that  you  will  summon  your  whole  for- 
titude, and  pass  your  time  as  agreeably 
as  possible.  Nothing  will  give  me  so 
much  sincere  satisfaction  as  to  hear  this, 
and  to  hea*  it  from  your  own  pen."  In 
writing  also  to  his  brother  John  Augus- 
tine, whom  he  seemed  specially  to  have 
loved,  Washington  referring  to  his 
wife,  says : — "  I  shall  hope  that  my 
friends  will  visit  and  endeavor  to  keep 
up  the  spirits  of  my  wife  as  much  as 
they  can,  for  my  departure  will,  I 
know,  be  a  cutting  stroke  upon  her ; 
and  on  this  account  alone  I  have  many 
disagreeable  sensations." 

Intense  and  wearing  as  were  the 
care  and  anxiety  of  the  Commander' 
in-Chief,  after  he  had  entered  upon  his 
duties  near  Boston,  his  thoughts  fre- 
quently reverted  to  home  affairs  at 
Mount  Yeraon.  Through  his  agent 


186 


MAKTHA   WASHINGTON. 


ue  kept  himself  advised  of  all  that 
was  going  on,  on  the  banks  of  the  Po- 
tomac ;  and  finding  that  he  should  not 
be  able  to  return  to  Virginia  in  the  au- 
tumn, as  he  anticipated,  he  wrote  to 
Mrs.  Washington  by  express  in  Novem- 
ber and  invited  her  to  join  him  at  the 
camp.  The  invitation  was  readily  ac- 
cepted, and  taking  her  own  carriage 
and  horses,  and  accompanied  by  her  son 
and  his  wife,  she  proceeded,  by  easy 
stages,  on  her  journey  to  the  north. 
Everywhere  she  was  the  recipient  of 

cniards  of  honor  and  escorts,  and  eve- 

1 

rything  was  done  to  manifest  the  peo- 
ple's regard  for  one  to  whom,  by  a 
sort  of  spontaneous  homage,  was  given 
the  title,  "Lady  Washington."  On 
reaching  Cambridge,  she  was  gladly 
welcomed  by  all,  and  her  chariot  and 
four,  with  black  postillions  in  scarlet 
and  white  liveries,  excited  much  admi- 
ration. 

Mrs.  Washington's  presence  not  only 
gladdened  her  husband,  but  was  espe- 
cially valuable  in  all  those  matters 
ivhere  a  woman's  tact  and  Ability  are 
requisite  to  meet  and  smooth  over 
social  and  other  difficulties.  She  pre- 
sided at  head-quarters  with  dignity  and 
ease,  and  gave  a  refining  and  improv- 
ing character  greatly  to  be  desired  in 
military  life.  She  also  took  a  lively 
interest  in  every  movement  calculated 
to  enliven  the  dullness  of  camp,  and 
prevailed  on  Washington  to  celebrate 
twelfth  night  in  due  style  as  the  anni- 
versary of  their  wedding. 

After  the  evacuation  of  Boston,  in 
March,  1776,  Mrs.  Washington  accom- 
panied the  general  to  New  York,  from 
which  city  at  the  close  of  May,  she 
proceeded  to  Philadelphia,  and  thence 


home  to  Mount  Vernon.  It  became 
her  custom  thenceforward  to  pas?  the 
winters  with  her  husband,  and  Wash- 
ington regularly,  at  the  close  of  each 
campaign,  sent  an  aide-de-camp  to  es- 
cort her  to  head-quarters.  She  was  al 
ways  welcomed  with  much  satisfaction, 
and  as  her  example  was  followed  by 
the  wives  of  other  general  officers, 
much  was  done  to  mitigate  the  hard 
and  stern  severities  of  the  revolution 
ary  struggle,  and  to  exercise  a  cheering, 
genial  influence  in  seasons  of  unusual 
disaster  and  depression. 

It  was  in  February,  1788,  during 
the  winter  of  unutterable  suffering  at 
Valley  Forge,  that  Mrs.  Washington 
was  again  at  head-quarters.  "  The 
general's  apartment,"  she  wrote  to 
Mrs.  Warren,  "  is  very  small ;  he  has 
had  a  log  cabin  built  to  dine  in,  which 
has  made  our  quarters  much  more  tol 
erable  than  they  were  at  first."  We 
have  it  on  good  authority,  that  her 
cheerful  submission  to  the  exceeding 
privation  and  hardship  of  that  bitter 
winter  helped  much  to  strengthen  the 
fortitude  of  the  half-starved  and  half- 
frozen  troops,  and  to  give  them  hope 
and  confidence  in  the  ultimate  results 
of  their  struggles  in  behalf  of  inde- 
pendence. She  was  conspicuous  in 
endeavoring  to  soften  the  distresses  of 
the  sick  and  destitute,  and  minister- 
ing relief  to  the  full  extent  of  her 
power.  Lady  Stirling,  Mrs.  Knox> 
wife  of  Gen.  Knox,  and  other  ladies 
who  were  in  camp,  joined  with  Mrs. 
Washington  in  these  acts  and  offices 
of  love  and  devotion  to  the  cause  in 
which  each  was  perilling  his  all. 

The    alliance  with    France,   which 
took  place  this  same  year,  was  cele 


MARTHA  WASHINGTON. 


181 


brated  with  great  joy  throughout  the 
country,  and  an  entertainment  was 
given  in  camp  in  the  pleasant  month  of 
May,  at  which  Mrs.  Washington  and  a 
number  of  distinguished  women  were 
present.  Ladies  and  gentlemen  also 
from  the  vicinity  were  largely  in  at- 
tendance, and  it  was  altogether  a  grand 
affair  under  the  circumstances.  Beside 
the  military  display  and  the  roar  of 
cannon,  there  was  dancing  in  the  eve- 
ning and  brilliant  fireworks.  Wash- 
ington himself  opened  the  ball,  and 
though  the  preparations  and  material 
of  every  kind  were  home-made,  yet  the 
enjoyment  of  the  company  was  none 
the  less  hearty  and  satisfactory. 

The  surrender  of  Cornwallis,  at  York- 
town,  in  Oct.,  1781,  virtually  brought 
the  Revolution  to  a  close.  Mrs.  Wash- 
ington's son  died  shortly  after,  leaving 
to  her  care  her  son's  widow  and  four 
grandchildren.  Washington  had  tak- 
en such  lively  interest  in  the  young 
man,  and  had  done  so  much  towards 
fitting  him  for  the  useful  and  honora- 
ble station  which  he  filled,  that  the 
death  of  Mr.  Custis  was  keenly  felt  by 
him,  and  he  spent  several  days  with  his 
bereaved  wife  and  family  in  order  to 
comfort  them  in  their  affliction.  '  Pub- 
lic duties,  however,  "were  imperative, 
and  the  great  and  good  man  who  had 
been  the  means  of  accomplishing  so 
much,  could  not  now  become  derelict 
when  his  country's  interests  were  at 
stake. 

In  January,  1783,  a  treaty  of  peace 
with  Great  Britain  was  signed  at  Par- 
is, and  by  the  close  of  March,  the  news 
reached  the  United  States.  In  Novem- 
ber, New  York  was  evacuated ;  Wash- 
ington parted  with  his  beloved  compan- 


ions in  arms;  was  everywhere  hailed 
with  acclamations  of  love  and  grati- 
tude ;  met  Congress  at  Annapolis  in  De- 
cember; resigned  his  commission  into 
their  hands ;  and  the  very  next  day 
hastened  to  his  house  at  Mount  Yer- 
non,  arriving  there  on  Christmas  eve, 
under  feelings  and  emotions  too  deep 
for  utterance.  "  The  scene  is  at  last  clos- 
ed," he  said,  writing  to  Governor  Clin- 
ton :  "  I  feel  myself  eased  of  a  load  of 
public  care.  I  hope  to  spend  the  re- 
mainder of  my  days  in  cultivating  the 
affections  of  good  men,  and  with  prac- 
tice of  the  domestic  virtues." 

Once  more  at  home,  and  released 
from  the  heavy  cares  so  recently  press- 
ing upon  him,  Washington  gave  him- 
self  up  to  the  enjoyments  which  agri- 
cultural life  always  afforded  him;  and 
Mrs.  Washington,  who  was  in  her  ele- 
ment at  home,  presided  with  grace  and 
dignity  at  the  simple  board  at  Mount 
Yernon.  She  was  noted  as  a  house- 
keeper in  every  department,  and  pos- 
sessing as  she  did  excellent  good  sense 
and  cheerfulness  of  spirit,  she  was  al- 
ways an  agreeable  companion,  a  boun- 
teous hostess,  and  an  admirable  mana- 
ger ;  much  of  her  time  also  was  spent 
in  the  care  and  training  of  her  grand- 
children recently  deprived  of  their 
father. 

For  a  brief  period  only  was  Wash- 
ington permitted  to  remain  at  Mount 
Yernon,  in  the  occupation  which  lie 
loved  and  which  he  had  resolved  never 
again  to  abandon.  The  perilous  con- 
dition of  the  country  subsequent  to  the 
war  and  before  a  national  government 
was  organized  weighed  heavily  on  his 
mind ;  and  it  was  felt  in  every  part  of 
the  country  that  his  further  services 


188 


MAETHA  WASHINGTON. 


could  not  be  dispensed  with  in  any 
wise.  Constant  correspondence,  and 
the  urgent  solicitations  of  the  noble 
band  of  patriots,  who  with  him  were 
anxiously  watching  the  course  of  events, 
brought  him  to  the  conviction  that  he 
must  be  present  at  the  Federal  Conven- 
tion. Accordingly  he  set  out  from 
Mount  Vernon  early  in  May,  1786, 
and  reached  Philadelphia  about  the 
middle  of  the  month.  Here  he  presid- 
ed with  dignity  and  judgment,  until 
that  great  work,  the  Constitution  of 
the  United  States,  was  completed  and 
reported  by  him  to  Congress  in  Sep- 
tember. 

Meanwhile,  "Washington  returned  to 
the  bosom  of  his  family,  quietly  wait- 
ing the  action  of  the  several  States  in 
respect  to  the  ratification  of  the  Con- 
stitution, and  looking  forward  with  in- 
tense earnestness  to  witness  its  actual 
operation.  Of  course,  as  we  all  know, 
there  was  but  one  sentiment  through- 
out the  country  ;  Washington  was 
unanimously  elected  president,  and, 
though  with  great  reluctance,  he  ac- 
cepted the  position. 

Although  Mrs.  Washington  was  not 
present  at  the  inauguration,  April  30th, 
and  at  the  festivities  immediately  con- 
nected therewith,  she  took  an  early  day 
to  leave  Mount  Vernon  and  go  to  take 
her  rightful  place  at  the  head  of  the 
president's  family.  She  was  now  well 
advanced  in  years,  being  within  a  few 
months  of  the  same  age  with  Washing- 
ton, viz.,  fifty-seven ;  but  she  did  not 
shrink  from  the  arduous  task  before 
her,  a  task  all  the  more  arduous  be- 
cause perfectly  new  and  untried ;  nei- 
ther did  she  refuse  or  make  any  diffi- 
culty about  assuming  the  position 


which  duty  laid  upon  her,  although 
as  she  well  knew,  both  herself  and  hei 
husband  would  be  subjected  to  search 
ing  scrutiny,  and  very  probably  ill 
natured,  unhandsome  criticism. 

On  the  17th  of  May,  accompanied 
by  her  grandchildren,  she  set  out  for 
the  seat  of  government  at  New  York. 
Everywhere,  throughout  her  journey, 
she  was  received  with  marked  atten 
tion  and  respect,  and  having  met  the 
president  at  Elizabethtown,  N.  J.,  she 
proceeded  with  him  by  watei  in  a  splen 
did  barge,  manned  by  thirteen  master 
pilots,  and  landed  at  Peck  Slip,  near 
the  president's  house,  amid  the  enthu- 
siastic cheers  of  a  vast  multitude. 

On  the  Friday  following,  Mrs.  Wash- 
ington had  a  general  reception,  which 
was  attended  by  the  first  society  in 
the  city  and  by  men  of  high  official 
rank  and  position.  This  same  evening 
became  thenceforward  the  regular  one 
for  receptions  at  her  house,  to  which 
all  persons  of  respectability  had  ac- 
cess, without  special  invitation,  and  at 
which  Washington  was  always  pres- 
ent. The  hours  were  from  eight  to  ten 
o'clock. 

These  levees,  thought  not  justly 
chargeable  with  ostentation  or  aping 
of  foreign  courtly  manners  and  cere- 
monies, were  nevertheless  always  dig- 
nified and  marked  by  less  of  that  dem- 
ocratic freedom  which  has  since  pre- 
vailed. Mrs.  Washington,  estimable 
and  excellent  a  lady  as  she  was,  was 
essentially  aristocratic  in  her  tastes  and 
appreciations ;  and  the  reader  need  not 
be  surprised  that,  in  certain  quarters, 
her  receptions  were  found  fault  with, 
and  were  cavilled  at  as  "  court-like 
levees,"  and  "  queenly  drawing-roonm" 


MAKTHA  WASHINGTON. 


The  fault-finding,  however,  was  as  un- 
generous as  it  was  unjust,  for  the  wife 
of  the  president  was  beloved  by  all 
who -knew  her,  and  though  occupying 
so  elevated  a  station  was  as  earnest  in 
her  desire  as  her  husband  to  retire 
from  it  at  the  earliest  moment  practi- 
cable and  resume  her  duties  at  home 
in  her  own  house. 

Writing  to  an  intimate  friend,  at  this 
date,  Mrs.  Washington  says :  "  It  is  ow- 
ing to  the  kindness  of  our  numerous 
friends  in  all  quarters  that  my  new  and 
unwished  for  situation  is  not  indeed  a 
burden  to  me.  When  I  was  much  young- 
er, I  should  probably  have  enjoyed  the 
innocent  gaieties  of  life  as  much  as  most 
persons  of  my  age;  but  I  had  long 
since  placed  all  the  prospects  of  my 
future  worldly  happiness  in  the  still 
enjoyments  of  the  fireside  at  Mount 
Vernon.  I  little  thought,  when  the 
war  was  finished,  that  any  circum- 
stances could  possibly  happen,  which 
would  call  the  general  again  into  pub- 
lic life.  I  had  anticipated  that  from 
that  moment  we  should  be  suffered  to 
grow  old  together  in  solitude  and  tran- 
quility.  That  was  the  first  and  dearest 
wish  of  my  heart." 

During  the  entire  period  of  Wash- 
ington's presidency,  his  wife  gave  her- 
self to  the  duties  and  responsibilities 
of  her  station  with  a  devotion  and 
carefulness  worthy  of  all  praise.  It  is 
true,  that,  as  she  afterwards  expressed 
herself,  she  looked  upon  the  years  of 
public  life  spent  in  New  York  and 
Philadelphia,  as  in  some  sense  among 
th«  "  lost  days "  of  her  life ;  but  she 
did  not  on  that  account  neglect  the  re- 
quirements of  her  position,  and  she 
knew  well  to  what  an  extent  her  hon- 


ored husband  relied  upon  her  for  co- 
operation and  support.  When  the  time 
came  that  Washington  completed  the 
second  term  of  his  presidency,  it  need 
no  vivid  imagination  to  picture  to  one 
self  the  delightful  eagerness  with  which 
the  venerable  pair,  whom  all  united  ir 
loving  and  admiring,  hastened  to  the 
haven  of  rest  at  Mount  Vernon.  "  The 
remainder  of  my  life,  which  in  the  course 
of  nature  cannot  be  long,"  Washington 
remarks,  in  a  letter  to  an  old  compan- 
ion in  arms,  "  will  be  occupied  in  rural 
amusements;  and  though  I  shall  se- 
clude myself  as  much  as  possible  from 
the  noisy  and  bustling  world,  none 
would  more  than  myself  be  regaled 
by  the  company  of  those  I  esteem,  at 
Mount  Vernon ;  more  than  twenty 
miles  from  which,  after  I  arrive  there, 
it  is  not  likely  that  I  shall  ever  be.  ... 
To-morrow,  at  dinner,  I  shall,  as  a  ser- 
vant of  the  public,  take  my  leave  of 
the  president  elect,  of  the  foreign  char- 
acters, the  heads  of  departments,  etc., 
and  the  day  following,  with  pleasure, 
I  shall  witness  the  inauguration  of  my 
successor  in  the  chair  of  government." 
Age  had  now  begun  to  tell  upon  the 
great  and  good  man  who  found  his 
highest  happiness  in  resigning  power 
and  pre-eminence,  usually  so  attractive 
to  man.  He  accordingly  invited  his 

O    «/ 

nephew,  Lawrence  Lewis,  to  take  up 
his  residence  at  Mount  Vernon,  and 
relieve  both  him  and  Mrs.  Washington 
from  some  of  the  numerous  calls  upon 
their  time  and  attention  which  needful 
hospitality  and  the  visits  of  strangers 
had  rendered  burdensome.  Mr.  Lewis 
accepted  the  kindly  expressed  in- 
vitation of  his  uncle;  and  therefrom 
certain  consequences  sprang,  which 


190 


MAKTHA  WASHINGTON. 


were  of  no  little  concern  to  "Lady 
Washington." 

At  this  time,  her  grandchildren  were 
at  home;  and  Miss  Nelly  Custis,  who 
was  a  sprightly  young  lady,  a  great  fa- 
vorite with  the  general  and  well  cal- 
culated to  stir  up  a  young  man's  blood, 
fell  at  once  across  the  path  of  Lewis. 
The  old,  old  story  was  repeated  again ; 
the  young  people  followed  the  exam- 
ple of  their  elders;  an  engagement 
took  place  in  due  time ;  and,  much  to 
Washington's  satisfaction,  the  nuptials 
were  celebrated  at  Mount  Vernon.  on 
his  birth-day,  February  22d,  1799.  It 
is  supposed  that  Mrs.  Washington  fa- 
vored another  suitor,  in  preference  to 
Mr.  Lewis;  but  if  so,  she  in  no  wise 
interfered  with  the  course  of  true  love, 
and  welcomed  the  husband  of  her  grand- 
daughter to  his  place  in  the  family,  with 
all  the  heartiness  and  sincerity  of  her 
nature. 

Although  Washington  had  left  pub- 
lic life,  as  he  thought  and  purposed, 
forever,  still  he  could  not  escape  from 
the  call  which  was  again  made  upon 
him.  It  will  be  remembered  that  the 
French  government  at  this  date,  saw 
fit  to  take  ground  of  such  a  nature, 
and  to  behave  generally,  in  its  inter- 
course with  the  United  States,  in  such 
wise  as  rendered  it  impossible  to  en- 
dure its  arrogance  and  insolence.  Pres- 
ident Adams,  in  the  discharge  of  his 
duty,  felt  called  upon  to  urge  prepar- 
ations for  war,  if  war  must  needs 
be,  and  Washington  was  immediately 
looked  to  for  advice,  counsel  and  action 
in  the  emergency.  He  was  again  ask- 
ed to  be  commander- in-chief,  and  to 
take  upon  him  the  oversight  of  all  the 
steps  necessary  to  put  the  country  in  a 


state  of  defence.  The  venerable  chief 
did  not  refuse  to  listen  to  the  call ;  but, 
notwithstanding  he  was  compelled  to 
be  away  from  home,  and  to  cause  new 
anxieties  to  Mrs.  Washington,  he  zeal- 
ously performed  his  work.  Happily, 
the  French  government  returned  to  itb 
senses,  and  all  difficulties  were  dis- 
posed of,  without  resorting  to  the  last 
arbitrament  of  arms,  greatly  to  the  re 
lief  of  Washington  and  his  beloved 
wife. 

The  winter  of  1799  had  uow  fully  set 
in.  Washington,  actively  occupied  in  va- 
rious improvements  and  changes  in  his 
favorite  estate,  was  constantly  in  mo- 
tion, riding  about  in  every  direction, 
overseeing,  planning,  arranging  matters 
for  the  future,  and,  among  other  things, 
ordering  a  new  family  vault.  This,  he 
said,  with  a  sort  of  melancholy  present- 
iment, as  it  seemed,  must  be  made  first 
of  all ;  "  for,"  he  continued,  "  I  may 
require  it  before  the  rest."  On  the  1 2th 
of  December,  he  was  on  horseback  as 
usual ;  but  the  day  turned  out  to  be 
cold,  raw,  and  snowy,  mixed  with  hail. 
He  became  chilled  through ;  was  seized 
with  a  violent  sore  throat ;  in  a  day  or 
two  he  grew  worse  and  seemed  to  be 
conscious  that  this  was  his  last  sick- 
ness. Despite  all  the  efforts  of  the 
physicians,  his  disease,  acute  laryngitis, 
made  rapid  progress,  and  the  end  speed- 
ily came. 

Mr.  Lear,  his  secretary  and  devoted 
friend,  has  furnished  an  intf  resting  nar- 
rative of  the  last  days  of  Washington. 
"  While  we  were  fixed  in  silent  grief," 
he  says,  in  speaking  of  the  moment  of 
departure,  "Mrs.  Washington,  who 
was  seated  at  the  foot  of  the  bed,  ask- 
ed, with  a  firm  and  collected  voice,  'Is 


MARTHA  WASHINGTON. 


191 


he  gone  ?'  I  could  not  speak,  but  held 
up  my  hand  as  a  signal  that  he  was  no 
more.  l  'Tis  well,'  she  said,  in  the  same 
voice.  '  All  is  *xow  over ;  I  shall  soon 
follow  him ;  I  have  no  more  trials  to 
pass  through.'"  Thus,  on  the  night 
of  Saturday,  December  14th,  between 
the  hours  of  ten  and  eleven,  the  great 
and  good  man  sank  to  his  rest  in  the 
fullness  of  his  well-spent  life,  in  the  en- 
joyment of  his  mental  faculties,  sur- 
rounded by  his  family,  and  sustained 
by  the  faith  and  hope  of  the  Christian, 
who  lies  down  in  the  grave  in  the  con- 
fidence of  a  joyful  resurrection  at  the 
last  day. 

It  needs  not  that  we  dwell  here  upon 
the  last  sad  offices  for  the  dead.  The 
funeral  services  were  conducted  with 
simplicity,  dignity  and  manifest  pro- 
priety, and  "Washington's  mortal  re- 
mains were  buried  at  Mount  Vernon, 
the  place  which  he  loved  above  all 
others  in  the  world.  Mrs.  Wash- 
ington received  visits  of  condolence 
from  President  Adams  and  many 
others;  and  from  every  quarter,  not 
only-  in  the  United  States  but  in 
foreign  lands,  tributes  of  sympathy 
and  sorrow  came  to  soothe,  as  far  as 


possible,   the  heart   of  th(    bereaved 
widow. 

With  the  same  earnest  devotion  to 
duty  that  had  ever  marked  her  course 
of  life,  the  venerable  lady  at  Mount 
Vernon  continued  faithfully  to  per- 
form her  manifold  obligations ;  she  re- 
ceived visitors  as  usual  at  her  home ; 
and  gave  attention  to  domestic  cares 
and  responsibilities,  and  to  the  carry- 
ing out  the  wishes  of  the  illustrious 
deceased.  But  it  was  not  for  a  long: 

3 

period  that  she  was  called  upon  thus 
to  act  and  bear  her  lot  alone. 

Some  two  years  later,  she  was*  at 
tacked  by  a  dangerous  fever,  and  was 
unable  to  rally.  When  conscious  that 
the  last  hour  was  near  at  hand,  she 
summoned  her  grandchildren  to  her 
bedside ;  she  uttered  words  of  mingled 
comfort  and  warning;  she  pointed 
them  to  that  hope  which  was  hers,  as 
well  as  his  who  had  not  long  before 
gone  to  his  rest ;  and  she  quietly  and 
peacefully  passed  away,  on  the  22d  of 
May,  1802,  and  in  the  seventy-first 
year  of  her  age.  All  that  was  morta] 
of  Martha  Washington  was  interred 
in  the  sr.me  vault  where  her  husband's 
body  was  laid  at  Mount  Vornon. 


BENJAMIN     FRANKLIN. 


WHEN  Benjamin  Franklin,  in  the 
autumn  of  life  sat  down,  sur- 
rounded by  the  pleasant  family  circle 
of  the  good  Bishop  of  St.  Asaph,  Dr. 
Shipley,  at  Twyford,  to  relate  to  his  son 
the  events  of  a  career  which  seemed  to 
him  to  offer  some  cheer  and  guidance  to 
the  world,  he  commenced  that  delight- 
ful Autobiography  with  a  far  back- 
ward glance  to  the  ancestors  upon 
whose  native  soil  he  was  then  tread- 
ing. "I  have  ever  had  a  pleasure," 
he  says,  "in  obtaining  any  little  an- 
ecdotes of  my  ancestors."  Indeed, 
he  once  made  a  special  pilgrimage 
for  the  purpose,  when  he  succeeded  in 
tracing  his  family  of  the  Franklins, 
through  a  "  long  pedigree  of  toil,"  in 
the  little  village  of  Ecton,  in  Northamp- 
tonshire, to  the  middle  of  the  six- 
teenth century.  For  generation  after 
generation,  down  to  Franklin's  day, 
they  were  the  blacksmiths  of  the  town, 
holding  their  own  on  a  few  acres,  and 
living  in  an  old  stone  house,  which 
was  still  called  by  their  name,  though 
it  had  passed  out  of  the  family  some 
years  before  the  visit  of  its  illustrious 
member  in  1758. 

We  may  see  him  on  that  visit,  so 
faithfully  recorded  in  a  letter  to  Mrs. 

(192) 


Franklin,  in  America,  standing  with 
the  wife  of  the  parish  clergyman 
among  the  thick  graves  of  the  centuries, 
as  the  old  tombstones  were  scoured 
that  his  son  might  copy  the  family  in- 
scriptions. Tne  last  Franklin  who 
lived  in  the  lady's  recollections  was 
Thomas,  his  father's  brother.  The 
nephew  expresses  himself  "  highly  en- 
tertained and  diverted  "  with  what  he 
heard  of  him ;  for  he  recognized  much 
in  common  between  this  uncle's  genius 
and  his  own.  "He  set  on  foot" — 
Franklin  himself  is  the  narrator — "  a 
subscription  for  erecting  chimes  in 
their  steeple  and  completed  it,  and  we 
heard  them  play.  He  found  out  an 
easy  method  of  saving  their  village 
meadows  from  being  drowned,  as  they 
used  to  be  sometimes  by  the  river, 
which  method  is  still  in  being;  but 
when  first  proposed;  nobody  could  con- 
ceive how  it  could  be ;  '  but,  however, 
they  said,  '  if  Franklin  says  he  knows 
how  to  do  it,  it  will  be  done.'  His 
advice  and  opinion  were  sought  for  on 
all  occasions,  by  all  sorts  of  people, 
and  he  was  looked  upon,  she  said,  by 
some,  as  something  of  a  conjurer." 

There  was  another  uncle,  Benjamin, 
the  poetaster,  who   came   to   Boston, 


.i.  ./riguu'ij-  oui/ina     'UJ^jjje  ui  i&possess-un  crtc 


HBPJP^^^P* 


BENJAMIN  FRANKLIN. 


195 


anonymous  offerings  by  night  under 
the  door  and  awaited  the  result.  He 
'iad  the  satisfaction  of  hearing  them 
read  with  becoming  admiration,  and 
probably  the  luxury  of  setting  them 
in  type  himself.  The  "  Courant "  was 
what  would  be  called  in  modern  slang 
a  "spicy"  paper — trenchant  and  sa- 
tirical. It  took  some  liberties  with 
the  powers  that  were — the  church, 
state,  and  the  "  college  "  of  those  times 
—  freedoms  which  would  probably 
pass  for  civilities  as  such  things  go 
now-a-days.  The  Assembly,  in  con- 
sequence, tyranically  ousted  James 
Franklin.  This  led  to  cancelling  his 
brother's  indentures,  that  the  paper 
might  appear  with  Benjamin's  name. 

The  relations  of  master  and  appren- 
tice in  the  good  old  times  allowed 
greater  indulgence  to  the  temper  of 
the  employer  than  we  hope  is  permis- 
sible at  present.  Quarrels  arose  be- 
tween the  brothers ;  one  perhaps  was 
saucy,  the  other  passionate,  and  blows 
sometimes  followed.  Benjamin,  taking 
advantage  of  the  broken  indentures, 
.  resolved  to  leave ;  obstacles  were  then 
interposed ;  he  managed  to  evade  them, 
raised  money  by  the  sale  of  his  books, 
I ,  and  embarking  in  a  sloop,  fled  to  New 
i  York.  Finding  no  opportunity  in  that 
city,  he  pursued  his  way,  with  various 
adventures  of  considerable  interest,  as 
related  in  the  Autobiography,  to  Phil- 
adelphia, making  his  first  entrance 
into  the  place,  in  which  he  was  after- 
wards to  play  so  important  a  part, 
from  a  boat  which  he  had  assisted  in 
vowing  down  the  Delaware,  one  mem- 
orable Sunday  morning,  in  October, 
—  1723,  at  the  as;e  of  seventeen.  He  was 

7  O 

clad  in  bis  working  dress,  soiled  by  ex- 


posures on  the  way ;  fatigued,  hungry, 
and  almost  penniless.  The  incident* 
of  that  first  day  are  as  familiar  as  any 
thing  in  Robinson  Crusoe.  Every  boy 
has  seen  the  young  Benjamin  Franklin 
walking  along  Market  Street,  with  the 
"three  great  puffy  rolls,"  passing  the 
door  of  his  future  wife,  noticed  not 
very  favorably  by  that  lady,  making 
the  circuit  of  the  town,  sharing  those 
never-to-be-forgotten  loaves  with  a 
mother  and  her  child,  till  he  finds 
shelter  in  sleep,  in  a  silent  meeting  of 
the  Quakers. 

He  immediately  sought  employment 
in  the  printing  offices  of  the  city,  going 
first  to  Andrew  Bradford,  by  the  advice 
of  whose  father,  the  printer,  William 
Bradford,  of  New  York,  he  had  left 
that  place  for  Philadelphia.  The  old 
gentleman  introduced  him  to  Samuel 
Keimer,  an  original,  a  compound  of 
the  knave  and  the  enthusiast,  whom 
he  found  literally  composing  an  elegy, 
stick  in  hand,  at  the  case,  upon  Aquila 
Rose,  a  young  printer  of  the  city,  re- 
cently deceased.  Keimer  was  one  of 
a  host  of  odd  people,  with  whom 
Franklin,  in  the  course  of  his  life, 
came  in  contact,  of  whom  there  are 
amusing  traces  in  his  letters  and  Au- 
tobiography. He  always  delighted  to 
study  human  nature  in  her  varieties, 
and  no  man  ever  had  a  better  opportu- 
nity, or  pursued  it  more  profitably. 
He  had  soon  the  means  of  making  the 
acquaintance  of  two  royal  governors; 
for  there  seems  to  have  been  some  in- 
fluence in  Franklin's  star  which  threw 
him  out  of  the  society  of  vagabonds 
among  titled  personages.  One  of  these 
was  Sir  William  Keith,  the  Governor 
of  Pennsylvania,  who  was  attracted  to 


190 


BENJAMIN   FRANKLIN. 


the  youth  by  a  letter  that  had  acci- 
dentally come  to  his  knowledge,  in 
which  the  apprentice  stated  his  rea- 
sons for  leaving  Boston.  He  made 
the  most  flattering  overtures  to  Frank- 
lin, recommending  him  to  open  a  print- 
ing office  in  the  province,  and  gave 
him  a  letter  to  smooth  the  way  for  the 
project,  with  his  father.  The  epistle 
assisted  the  youth's  consequence  on 
his  visit  to  Boston,  produced  some 
surprise  and  good  wishes  for  the  fu- 
ture, but  no  money.  On  his  way  back 
to  Philadelphia,  the  young  printer  had 
the  honor  of  an  interview  with  Gover- 
nor Burnet,  a  son  of  the  bishop,  then 
in  office  at  New  York.  It  is  evidence 
of  the  size  and  character  of  the  present 
metropolis  at  that  time  that  the  gover- 
nor heard  from  the  captain  who  had 
brought  him  to  the  place,  of  a  passen- 
ger, with  a  number  of  books  on  board, 
and  that  he  invited  him  in  consequence 
to  see  his  library. 

Governor  Keith  was  as  enthusias- 
tic as  ever  on  the  scheme  for  a  good 
printer  in  the  province,  and  directed 
Franklin  to  make  out  a  list  of  what 
would  be  wanting,  and  proceed  by  the 
packet  to  England,  with  a  letter  of 
credit  for  the  necessary  funds,  with 
which  he  would  provide  him.  There 
are  men  in  the  world  whose  imagina- 
tions give  them  the  faculty  of  seeing  a 
thing  in  the  strongest  light  at  a  dis- 
tance, who  have  no  capacity  to  grapple 
with  it  close  at  hand.  Keith  appears 
to  have  been  one  of  these ;  a  man  of 
words  and  not  of  deeds.  Franklin  was 
ready ;  not  so  the  letter  of  credit ;  it 
was  deferred  with  promises  to  be  sent 
to  one  place  and  another,  and  finally 
on  ship  board.  The  result  was  that 


Franklin  found  himself  in  London,  ic 
1724,  on  a  fool's  errand.  Some  fifty 
years  afterwards,  in  the  Autobiogra- 
phy, he  summed  up  the  character  of 
his  eminent  friend  philosophically 
enough — "  He  wished  to  please  every 
body;  and,  having  little  to  give,  he 
gave  expectations.  He  was  otherwise 
an  ingenious,  sensible  man,  a  pretty 
good  writer,  and  a  good  governor  for 
the  people." 

Thus  Franklin  was  thrown  upon  the 
great  metropolis.  Fortunately,  within 
the  limits  of  the  civilized  world,  a 
printer,  wherever  cast,  will  always 
alight  upon  his  feet.  Franklin  soon 
found  employment,  and  supported  him- 
self at  his  trade  during  his  eighteen 
months'  residence  in  London.  His 
industry  at  this  time  was  great  as  ever, 
but,  unhappily,  the  principles  in  which 
he  had  been  indoctrinated  at  home  had 
been  gradually  relaxed.  He  had  a 
shabby  companion  in  Ralph,  who  came 
with  him  from  Philadelphia,  and  sub- 
sequently grew  into  a  voluminous  po- 
litical writer,  under  the  patronage  of 
Bubb  Doddington.  The  two  cronies 
lived  together  in  Little  Britain;  we 
are  sorry  to  say  their  principles  were 
not  of  the  best;  theoretical  infidelity 
appears  to  have  been  their  amusement, 
and  both  were  faithless  to  their  obli- 
gations to  the  fair  they  had  left  in 
America.  Franklin  forgot  the  lady 
Miss  Read,  whom  he  had  courted  in 
Philadelphia,  and  Ralph  rather  prided 
himself  on  his  abandonment  of  his  wife 
and  child.  The  conclusion  of  the  inti- 
macy between  the  chums  was  Ralph's 
borrowing  Franklin's  money,  and 
Franklin  making  love  to  his  friend's 
mistress  in  his  absence. 


BENJAMIN   FRANKLIN. 


191 


Franklin  also  published,  at  this  time, 
*  A  Dissertation  on  Liberty  and  Neces- 
sity, Pleasure  and  Pain,"  inscribed  to 
his  friend ;  another  erratum,  of  his  life, 
he  frankly  admits.  It  led,  however,  to 
his  introduction  to  Dr.  Mandeville,  and 
a  club  which  he  maintained.  A  casual 
introduction  to  Sir  Hans  Sloane,  who 
called  upon  him  to  purchase  a  purse 
of  asbestos,  may  be  mentioned  as  a  sug- 
gestive fact  in  the  history  of  the  future 
man  of  science. 

It  is  remarkable,  again,  how  men  of 
eminence  are  attracted  to  this  printer's 
boy,  Franklin.  Sir  William  Wynd- 
ham,  afterwards  Earl  of  Egremont, 
hearing  of  his  excellent  qualifications 
as  a  swimmer,  was  desirous  of  secur- 
ing his  services  as  the  instructor  of  his 
sons.  Franklin  had  now,  however, 
made  up  his  mind  to  return  home,  led 
by  the  inducements  held  out  to  him 
in  a  trading  scheme  by  a  Mr.  Denham, 
whose  acquaintance  he  had  made  on 
the  outer  voyage. 

On  his  return  to  Pennsylvania,  in 
the  summer  of  1726,  he  turned  over  a 
new  leaf,  with  fewer  errata  than  the 
blotted  London  pages.  It  is  much  to 
be  regretted  that  the  plan  for  regu- 
lating the  future  conduct  of  his  life, 
which  he  drew  up  on  the  voyage,  al- 
luded to  in  the  Autobiography,  is  miss- 
ing from  the  very  interesting  journal 
of  occurrences  at  sea  to  which  we  are 
referred.  He  was  now  twenty,  with 
confirmed  habits  of  industry,  a  mind 
trained  to  observation,  an  extraordi- 
nary acquaintance  with  the  world  for 
one  of  his  years,  and,  for  his  time  and 
country,  a  rare  felicity  in  composition, 
to  state  in  print  what  he  might  think 
or  desire  to  accomplish.  His  style  was 


already  formed  in  sentences,  clear,  dis- 
tinctly separated,  terse  and  pointed,  ar 
index  of  his  mind  and  character,  and 
an  admirable  vehicle  for  his  peculiar 
sagacity  and  humor.  We  may  see  the 
young  man  on  the  deck  of  the  Berk- 
shire, in  mid  Atlantic,  calmly  weigh- 
ing his  past  career,  rebuking  its  graver 
offences,  commending  the  diligence 
which  had  been  his  preserver,  scruti- 
nizing carefully  those  minor  morals,  as 
they  have  been  called,  of  temper  and  the 
proprieties,  which  may  be  cultivated  to 
promote  the  great  successes  of  life. 

At  Philadelphia  he  found  his  offi- 
cious friend,  Governor  Keith,  walking 
the  streets  a  private  citizen,  and  his 
neglected  Ariadne,  Miss  Read,  the  wife 
of  "one  Rogers,  a  potter."  His  en- 
gagement with  Denham  in  store-keep- 
ing prospered  for  a  time,  but  was 
speedily  interrupted  by  the  death  of 
that  friend,  and  Benjamin,  who  thought 
he  had  bid  farewell  to  stick  and  case 
forever,  resumed  his  old  employment 
with  Keimer,  who  had  prospered  in 
the  world. 

One  of  his  first  steps  in  this  new 
residence  at  Philadelphia,  was  the  for- 
mation of  his  friends  into  a  social  and 
literary  club,  to  which  he  gave  the 
name  The  Junto.  This  society,  founded 
for  mutual  improvement  by  a  few  in- 
telligent clerks  and  mechanics,  lasted 
for  forty  years,  and  became  the  basis 
of  the  American  Philosophical  Society. 
Out  of  this  Junto  came  the  great  PhiL 
adelphia  Library,  "the  mother  of  all 
the  North  American  subscription  li- 
braries." It  was  suggested  by  the  lit- 
tle joint-stock  collection  of  books  of 
Franklin's  knot  of  scriveners,  joiners, 
and  shoemakers. 


198 


BENJAMIN  FRANKLIN. 


While  these  things  were  going  on, 
and  Franklin  was  drawing  up  all  sorts 
of  plans  for  knowledge  and  improve- 
ment, he  did  not  neglect  the  practical 
part  of  life.  His  business  as  a  printer 
—ho  was  now  in  partnership  with  his 
friend  Meredith,  master  of  his  own 
office — was  not  neglected ;  on  the  con- 
trary, it  throve  wonderfully  with  his 
ingenuity  and  application.  One  of  his 
early  projects  was  the  establishing  of 
a  newspaper,  for  which  there  was  then 
an  opening.  He  unhappily  communi- 
cated the  plan,  before  he  was  quite 
ready  for  its  accomplishment,  to  one 
of  his  acquaintances  in  the  profession, 
who  carried  it  to  his  rival,  Keimer,  by 
whom  he  was  anticipated.  To  counter- 
act the  influence  of  the  new  journal, 
he  threw  the  weight  of  his  talents  into 
Andrew  Bradford's  gazette,  "The 
Weekly  Mercury,"  to  which  he  con- 
tributed some  half  dozen  capital  es- 
says of  a  series  entitled  "The  Busy 
Body."  Keimer's  feeble  attempt  fell 
through  before  the  end  of  a  year,  when 
the  "Pennsylvania  Gazette"  became 
the  property  of  Franklin  and  Mere- 
dith. The  two  friends  commenced  the 
publication  of  the  Gazette,  September 
25th,  1729.  It  was  long  continued 
under  the  editorship  of  Franklin. 

The  year  1730  brought  about  Frank- 
lin's match  with  Deborah  Read,  the 
lady  to  whom  we  have  seen  him  en- 
gaged before  his  visit  to  Europe,  and 
who  was  married  in  his  absence.  Her 
husband  proved  to  be  a  "  worthless  fel- 
low," got  into  debt,  and  ran  away  to 
the  West  Indies.  He  was,  moreover, 
laboring  under  the  suspicion  of  having 
another  wife  living  in  England.  Frank- 
lin took  the  risk  of  his  coming  back, 


which  fortunately  never  happened,  and 
secured  "a  good  and  faithful  help 
mate,"  the  honored  companion  for  for- 
ty-four years  of  his  long  life,  sharing 
his  rising  efforts,  living  to  witness  his 
brilliant  successes  in  philosophy,  and 
rapidly  growing  importance  in  the 
State. 

In  1732  Franklin  began  the  publi- 
cation of  his  famous  "  Poor  Richard's 
Almanac,"  which  appeared  annually 
for  a  quarter  of  a  century.  It  was  a 
great  favorite  with  our  forefathers,  as 
it  well  might  be  in  those  days  with  its 
stock  of  useful  information,  and  the 
cheerful  facetiousness  and  shrewd 
worldly-wise  maxims,  of  temperance, 
health,  and  good  fortune,  by  its  editor, 
Richard  Saunders,  Philomath,  as  he 
called  himself — for  Franklin  appeared 
on  its  title-page  only  as  printer  and 
publisher.  The  maxims  at  the  close 
of  the  work  in  1758  were  collected  into 
a  famous  tract,  "  The  Way  to  Wealth," 
which,  printed  on  broad  sheets,  and 
translated  into  various  languages,  has 
been  long  since  incorporated  into  the 
proverbial  wisdom  of  the  world.  By 
some  persons  its  lessons  have  been 
thought  to  give  a  rather  avaricious 
turn  to  the  industry  of  the  country ; 
but  there  was  nothing  really  in  Frank- 
lin or  his  philosophy  to  encourage  par- 
simony. Benevolence  and  true  kind- 
ness were  laws  of  his  nature,  and  if 
he  taught  men  to  be  prudent  and 
economical,  it  was  that  they  might 
be  just  and  beneficent.  We  have  not 
only  such  spurs  to  activity  as  "  Dili- 
gence is  the  mother  of  good  luck," 
and  "  One  to-day  is  worth  two  to-mor 
rows,"  but  a  charitable  word  foi 
the  unfortunate,  and  those  who  fall  in 


BENJAMIN  FKANKLIN. 


199 


the  race.  "  It  is  hard,"  he  says,  "  for 
an  empty  sack  to  stand  upright." 

Public  duties  now  began  to  flow  in 
upon  Franklin  apace.  In  1736  he  was 
chosen  clerk  of  the  General  Assembly, 
which  gave  him  some  incidental  ad- 
vantages in  securing  the  printing  of 
the  laws,  and  the  following  year  was 
appointed  Deputy  Postmaster  in  Phil- 
adelphia. His  hand  is  in  everything 
useful  which  is  taking  its  rise  in  Phil- 
adelphia. He  is  the  Man  of  Ross  in 
the  place,  setting  on  foot  a  building 
for  Whitefield  to  preach  in,  instituting 
fire  companies,  editing  and  publishing 
his  newspaper,  printing  books,  issuing, 
in  1741,  the  "General  Magazine  and 
Historical  Chronicle,"  inventing  his 
Franklin  stove  in  1742,  drawing  up  a 
proposal  for  the  establishment  of  an 
Academy  in  1743,  out  of  which  grew 
the  University  of  Pennsylvania ;  the 
next  year  projecting  and  establishing 
the  American  Philosophical  Society ; 
afterwards  assisting  in  founding  the 
Pennsylvania  Hospital. 

The  public  business  of  the  country 
is  now  to  raise  Franklin  to  a  wider 
field  of  exertion  than  the  city  limits  of 
Philadelphia.  In  1753  he  is  appoint- 
ed by  the  department  in  London,  Post- 
master-General for  the  Colonies.  The 
following  year  he  is  sent  by  the  Penn- 
sylvania House  of  Assembly  as  a 
member  to  the  Congress  of  Commis- 
sioners, meeting  at  Albany,  to  confer 
with  the  Chief  of  the  Six  Nations,  on 
common  means  of  defence.  On  his 
way  he  draws  up  a  plan  for  a  general 
system  of  Union  of  the  Colonies,  for 
purposes  of  defence  and  the  like, 
which  is  the  first  time  the  word  Union 
is  distinctly  sounded  among  the  States. 


The  Home  Government  saw  too  much 
independence  in  the  scheme,  and  sent 
over  General  Braddock  and  his  army 
to  fight  the  battles  of  the  provincials 
for  them.  Franklin  waited  upon  the 
consequential  Englishman  on  his  arri- 
val, at  Fredericktown,  in  Maryland, 
assisted  him  greatly  in  his  equipment 
by  means  of  his  influence  over  the  re- 
sources of  Pennsylvania,  and  proffered 
some  good  advice  as  to  Indian  ambus- 
cades, which  the  general  was  too  fool- 
hardy to  listen  to.  Franklin  shook 
his  head  over  the  grand  march  through 
the  wilderness.  He  was  called  upon 
at  Philadelphia  for  a  subscription  to 
the  fire- works  for  the  expected  victory. 
Upon  his  hesitating,  one  of  the  appli- 
cants said  with  emphasis,  "  Why,  you 
surely  don't  suppose  that  the  fort  will 
not  be  taken !"  "  I  don't  know,"  he 
replied,  "  that  it  will  not  be  taken ; 
but  I  know  that  the  events  of  war  are 
subject  to  great  uncertainty."  There 
was  one  man  at  least  in  the  land  who 
was  not  taken  by  surprise  at  the  news 
of  Braddock's  defeat.  After  this, 
Franklin  is  himself  employed  by  his 
State  in  superintending  its  western 
defences  against  the  French  and  In- 
dians; but  when  Governor  Morris 
talks  of  his  making  a  military  expedi- 
tion against  Fort  Du  Quesne,  he  shows 
no  disposition  to  follow  in  the  foot- 
prints of  Braddock. 

The  philosophical  studies  of  Frank- 
lin were  now  taking  form  in  numerous 
experiments  and  inventions.  His  at- 
tention appears  to  have  been  first  call- 
ed to  the  subject  on  a  visit  to  Boston, 
in  1746,  when  he  witnessed  the  experi- 
ments of  Dr.  Spence,  who  had  lately 
come  from  Scotland.  The  arrival  of  a 


200 


BENJAMIN   FRANKLIN. 


glass  tube  in  Philadelphia,  sent  by  the 
ingenious  Peter  Collinson,  of  London, 
with  directions  for  its  use,  also  stimu- 
lated inquiry,  which  Franklin  carried 
on  to  advantage  with  the  important 
assistance  of  his  friend,  Ebenezer  Kin- 
nersley.  His  first  observations,  in- 
cluding his  discovery  of  positive  and 
negative  electricity,  were  communicat- 
ed in  a  letter  to  Collinson,  dated  July 
llth,  1747.  In  1749,  he  suggests  the  use 
of  pointed  rods — the  invention  of  the 
lightning-rod— to  draw  electricity  harm- 
lessly to  the  ground  or  water.  His 
celebrated  kite  experiment,  identify- 
ing lightning  and  electricity,  was  made 
at  Philadelphia  in  the  summer  of  1752. 
As  his  researches  went  on,  the  results 
were  communicated,  through  his  cor- 
respondent Collinson,  to  the  Royal  So- 
ciety, but  their  publication  at  first  fell 
into  the  hands  of  Cave,  the  celebrated 
publisher  of  the  "  Gentleman's  Maga- 
zine," by  whom  they  were  issued  in 
quarto.  Of  the  style  and  philosophi- 
cal merit  of  these  communications, 
which  have  a  place  in  every  history  of 
the  science,  we  may  cite  the  generous 
testimony  of  Sir  Humphrey  Davy. 
"  A  singular  felicity  of  induction,"  he 
says,  "  guided  all  Franklin's  researches, 
and  by  very  small  means  he  establish- 
ed very  grand  truths.  The  style  and 
manner  of  his  publication  on  elec- 
tricity are  almost  as  worthy  of  admi- 
ration as  the  doctrine  it  contains." 

The  honor  conferred  upon  Franklin 
for  these  communications  and  discov- 
eries, by  the  Royal  Society,  in  making 
him  a  fellow,  in  1756,  was,  contrary 
to  the  regulations  of  that  body,  be- 
stowed unsolicited  when  he  was 
America. 


m 


One  period  of  the  life  of  Franklin 
has  now  closed ;  the  printer  and  edi- 
tor is  henceforth  to  be  lost  in  the  pub- 
licist and  statesman.  He  had  been 
continued  in  the  Legislature,  counsel- 
ling and  assisting  in  the  affairs  of  the 
Province,  studying  thoroughly  the 
vices  and  defects  of  its  mongrel  gov- 
ernment, occasionally  casting  his  eye 
upon  the  map  of  the  whole  country, 
when  he  was  one  day  chosen  by  the 
Assembly  Agent  of  Pennsylvania  to 
represent  its  interests  with  the  proprie- 
taries and  the  government  in  England. 
He  arrived  in  London,  the  second  time, 
July  27th,  1757. 

The  immediate  business  which  car- 
ried Franklin  to  London,  was  the  refu- 
sal of  the  Proprietaries,  the  sons  of 
William  Penn,  the  possessors  of  large 
territory,  and  entitled  to  important 
political  control,  to  submit  their  lands 
to  a  tax  for  the  general  welfare,  which 
the  Assembly  had  imposed  upon  the 
whole  State.  Reasonable  as  the  pro- 
position appears,  it  was  so  hedged  in 
by  prescriptive  rights  and  legal  diffi- 
culties, consultations  with  the  Proprie- 
taries, arguments  before  the  Board  of 
Trade,  and  impinged  so  greatly  upon 
the  royal  prerogative,  that  it  was  three 
years  before  the  vexed  discussion  was 
brought  to  a  close  in  favor  of  the  Pro- 
vince. "While  this  political  litigation 
was  pending,  a  memorable  publication, 
the  "Historical  Review  of  Pennsyl- 
vania," appeared  in  London.  It  was 
a  pungent  account  of  the  Provincial 
management,  was  written  with  ability, 
and  was  generally  attributed  to  Frank- 
lin ;  but  he  appears  only  to  have  as- 
sisted in  its  preparation. 

He,    however,     published    anothei 


BENJAMIN  FRANKLIN. 


203 


pamphlet  of  wider  scope,  which  ren- 
dered a  signal  service  to  his  country. 
This  was  his  tract  entitled  "  The  Inter- 
est of  Great  Britain  Considered,"  a  re- 
view of  the  motives  for  retaining 
Canada  in  the  approaching  peace  with 
France.  In  this  year  of  the  publica- 
tion of  the  Canada  pamphlet,  Frank- 
lin was  elected  a  member  of  the  Coun- 
cil of  the  Royal  Society  ;  and  we  find 
him  subsequently  placed  on  its  com- 
mittees in  reference  to  the  introduc- 
tion and  use  of  lightning  rods. 

Franklin — the  University  of  Oxford 
had  now  made  him  Doctor  of  Laws — 
returned  to  America  in  1762,  honored 
as  a  philosopher  abroad,  with  many 
noble  friendships  with  good  and  active 
minded  men ;  to  be  greeted  at  home 
with  enthusiasm  for  the  discharge  of 
his  agency,  and  assigned  new  employ- 
ment in  the  provincial  service.  Two 
years  later,  the  turn  of  events  brings 
him  again  in  London,  as  the  agent  of 
his  State,  which,  in  common  with  the 
other  colonies,  listened  with  alarm  to 
rumors  of  Stamp  Acts  and  other  ag- 
gressions of  the  mother  country.  No 
more  astute  counsellor  could  be  for- 
warded to  cope  with  the  diplomacy  of 
the  old  world.  It  is  soon  perceived 
through  the  length  and  breadth  of 
America.  Georgia,  at  one  extremity, 
adds  him  to  her  delegation,  and  Massa- 
chusetts at  another.  He  is  also  agent 
for  New  Jersey.  Called  before  par- 
liament in  1766,  without  special  pre- 
paration, he  answers  fully  and  shrewd- 
ly all  questions  proposed.  There  is 
enough  wisdom  in  his  responses  to 
save  an  empire,  if  the  British  repre- 
sentatives had  ears  to  hear.  Shrewdly 
again,  six  years  later — so  long  a  time 
26 


is  given  the  British  nation  for  reflec- 
tion before  this  fatal  drama  is  hurried 
to  its  catastrophe — does  he  manage 
that  affair  of  the  intercepted  Hutchin- 
son  Letters,  which  removed  the  last 
veil  from  the  insincerity  of  British 
placemen  in  America,  opening  the 
eyes,  not  only  of  Massachusetts,  but 
of  a  continent,  to  the  necessity  before 
it. 

Events  were  now  rapidly  approach- 
ing a  crisis.  The  old  Continental  Con- 
gress met  in  Philadelphia,  and  for- 
warded its  eloquent,  weighty  remon- 
strances to  king,  parliament  and  peo- 
ple. Franklin  incorporated  their  sug- 
gestions with  wisdom  of  his  own  in 
pleas  and  remonstrances;  Lord  Chat- 
ham heard  him  gladly  and  strength- 
ened his  own  convictions  by  his  warn- 
ings; there  was  talk  of  rconciliation 
and  adjustments  within  parliament 
and  without — all  circling  about  Frank- 
lin,, and  all  came  to  nothing.  The  phi- 
losopher kept  his  finger  on  the  pulse 
of  the  nation;  he  saw  the  madness 
fixed,  and,  having  no  relish  for  an  idle 
residence  in  the  Tower  on  bread  and 
water,  opportunely  departed  for  Ainer 
ica,  after  ten  years  of  fruitless  moni 
tions  to  England. 

Landing  in  America  the  5th  of  May, 
1775,  he  heard  of  the  battle  of  Lexing- 
ton. It  was  fought  while  he  was  on 
the  Atlantic,  perhaps  while  the  philo- 
sopher was  meditating  those  experi- 
ments on  its  waters  which  resulted  in 
the  discovery  of  the  temperature  of 
the  Gulf  stream.  He  was  now  to  study 
the  fever  heats  of  his  countrymen,  and 
distinguish  between  lukewarmness  and 
resolution  among  men.  He  was  elected 
immediately  to  the  second  Continental 


202 


BENJAMIN   FEANKLIX. 


Congress,  counselling  with  the  wisest 
of  his  land  while  he  assisted  in  the 
military  defence  of  his  State  as  a  mem- 
ber of  its  Committee  of  Safety.  In 
Congress  he  drafted  articles  of  Con- 
federation, was  appointed  Postmaster- 
General,  visited  the  camp  of  Wash- 
ington at  Cambridge  —  think  of  the 
runaway  apprentice  of  half  a  century 
before  taking  this  glance  at  his  native 
town — is  sent  to  Canada  to  negotiate 
insurrection,  and  on  that  memorable 
day  of  July,  at  the  age  of  seventy, 
puts  his  neat,  flowing  signature  to  the 
Declaration  of  Independence.  "  We 
must  be  unanimous,"  said  Hancock, 
on  this  occasion;  "there  must  be  no 
pulling  different  ways;  we  must  all 
hang  together."  "Yes,"  answered 
Franklin,  "  we  must,  indeed,  all  hang 
together,  or  most  assuredly  we  shall 
all  hang  separately." 

This  Ulysses  of  many  counsels  is 
next  at  the  head  of  a  Convention  at 
Philadelphia,  framing  a  State  Consti- 
tution, in  which,  "with  less  wisdom 
than  usual,  he  advocated  a  single  leg- 
islative assembly;  anon  we  find  him 
travelling  to  Staten  Island,  sleeping  in 
the  same  bed  with  John  Adams,  and 
philosophically  arguing  that  statesman 
to  repose  with  a  curtain  dissertation 
on  opening  the  window  for  ventila- 
tion,* as  the  commissioners  pursued 
their  way  to  a  fruitless  interview  with 
Lord  Howe.  A  month  later  and  he  is 
on  his  way  to  Paris,  accompanied  by 
his  grandsons,  William  Temple  Frank- 
lin and  Benjamin  Franklin  Bache,  a 
commissioner  to  negotiate  a  treaty  and 

*  This  incident,  related  by  John  Adams  in 
his  Autobiography  (Works,  III.,  75),  is  too 
sharacteristic  to  be  omitted. 


alliance  with  the  French  monarch.  His 
residence  at  the  capital,  apart  from  the 
toilsome  business  of  his  American  ne- 
gotiations, which  taxed  all  his  re- 
sources and  equanimity,  has  an  air  of 
genteel  comedy  and  stage  triumph 
He  is  courted  and  flattered  by  ladies 
of  distinction;  there  is  a  very  pretty 
mot  complimentary  to  the  philosopher, 
of  Madame  de  Chaumont,  when  the 
young  and  beautiful  Mademoiselle  de 
Passy  is  married  to  the  Marquis  de 
Tonnere,  "  Helas !  tous  les  conduc- 
teurs  de  Monsieur  Franklin  n'ont  pas 
empeche  le  tonnerre  de  tomber  sur 
Mademoiselle  de  Passy ; "  writes  out 
for  Madame  Brillon  and  the  rest  his 
pretty,  wise  fables  in  most  delightful 
prose;  the  venerable  sage  trifles  as 
gallantly  as  a  youth  of  twenty;  his 
portraits  and  bust  are  everywhere. 
Turgot  writes  his  splendid  epigraph — 

"  Eripuit    coelo    fulmen,    sceptrumque    tyran 


nis  "— 


the  statesman  and  philosopher  is  in 
troduced  to  the  king  and  court  at  Ver- 
sailles, and  thus  the  man  diligent  in 
business  comes  to  realize  the  proverb 
and  stand  before  kings,  not  before 
mean  men.  It  is  his  own  application 
somewhere  in  his  Autobiography  of 
the  saying  of  Solomon. 

We  may  not  here  pause  over  the 
negotiations  at  Paris,  which  belong  as 
well  to  others  and  altogether  to  the 
general  page  of  history,  but  must 
hasten  to  the  final  settlement.  Suffice 
it  that  in  the  most  intricate  perplex- 
ities, civil,  naval  and  military,  of  em 
barrassed  finance  and  threatened  polit- 
ical actions,  perplexed  by  Arthur  Lee, 
supporting  Jay  at  Madrid  and  Paul 
Jones  on  the  ocean,  smoothing,  aiding 


BENJAMIN  FRANKLIN 


203 


contriving  and  assisting  by  word  and 
by  pen,  always  sagacious,  always  to 
the  point,  whether  commissioner  or 
plenipotentiary,  he  steers  the  bark  of 
his  country  to  the  desired  haven.  He 
signs  with.  Jay  the  preliminary  Treaty 
of  Peace  with  Great  Britain  and  its 
final  ratification,  September  3d,  1783. 
Continuing  his  duties  for  awhile,  he 
finally,  burdened  with  infirmities,  left 
Paris  in  July,  1785,  passed  a  few  days 
in  England,  and  reached  Philadelphia 
in  September.  A  grateful  nation,  from 
the  highest  to  the  lowest,  honored 
his  return.  America,  too,  had  yet 
other  duties  in  store  for  her  rep- 
resentative son.  He  held  for  three 
years  the  Presidency  of  Pennsylvania 
under  its  old  Constitution,  and  when, 
at  the  instigation  of  Hamilton  and 
Madison,  the  chiefs  of  the  nation 
assembled,  under  the  Presidency  of 
Washington,  to  form  the  Constitu- 
tion of  the  United  States,  Franklin 
was  there,  counselling  and  suggesting 
as  ever,  and  pouring  oil  on  the  trou- 
bled waters  of  controversy. 

The  venerable  Nestor  of  three  gene- 
rations; born  in  the  old  Puritan  time, 
with  the  shades  of  the  past  hanging 
about  his  home;  traversing  the  mili- 
tary period  of  two  wars,  from  Wolfe 
to  Washington,  from  Quebec  to  York- 
town;  privileged  to  partake  of  the 
new  era  of  laws  and  legislation — the 
old  sage,  full  of  years  and  honors,  has 
now  at  length  finished  his  work.  He 
has  inaugurated  a  new  period  in  phi- 
losophy ;  he  has  heralded  new  princi- 
ples in  politics;  he  has  shown  his 
countrymen  how  to  think  and  write ; 
lie  has  embalmed  the  wisdom  of  his 
life  in  immortal  compositions ;  he  has 


blessed  two  great  cities  with  associa- 
tions of  pleasure  and  profit  clustering 
about  his  name;  he  has  become  the 
property  of  the  nation  and  the  world : 
there  is  nothing  further  but  retirement 
and  death.  His  daughter,  Mrs.  Bache, 
and  his  family  of  grandchildren  were 
with  him  in  his  home  in  Market  Street, 
Philadelphia,  as  the  inevitable  day 
came  on.  He  suffered  much  from  his 
disorder,  the  stone,  but  was  seldom 
without  his  mental  employments  and 
consolations.  His  homely  wisdom  and 
love  of  anecdote,  it  is  pleasing  to  learn, 
kept  him  company  to  the  last.  He 
died  about  eleven  o'clock  at  nighty 
April  17th,  1790. 

Is  it  necessary  to  describe  the  person 
or  draw  the  character  of  Franklin? 
His  effigy  is  at  every  turn ;  that  figure 
of  average  height,  full — a  little  pleth 
oric,  perhaps — the  broad  countenance 
beaming  benevolence  from  the  specta- 
cled grey  eye — the  whole  appearance 
indicating  calmness  and  confidence. 
Such  in  age,  as  we  all  choose  to  look 
upon  him,  was  the  man  Franklin. 
Within,  who  shall  paint,  save  himself, 
in  the  small  library  of  his  writings, 
the  mingling  of  sense  and  humor,  of 
self-denial  and  benevolence,  the  whim- 
sical, sagacious,  benevolent  mind  of 
Franklin,  ever  bent  upon  utility,  ever 
conducting  to  something  agreeable  and 
advantageous ;  the  great  inventor,  the 
profound  scientific  inquirer,  the  far 
seeing  statesman ;  masking  his  worth 
by  his  modesty;  falling  short,  perhaps 
of  the  loftiest  heights  of  philosophy 
but  firmly  treading  the  path  of  com 
mon  life,  sheltering  its  nakedness,  and 
ministering  in  a  thousand  ways  to  its 
comforts  and  pleasures. 


ROBERT    BURNS. 


OOBERT  BURNS  belonged  by 
4-*  birth  to  the  peasant  or  small  far- 
mer class  of  Scotland,  his  father,  Wil- 
liam Burness,  as  he  wrote  the  name, 
the  son  of  a  farmer  in  Kincardineshire, 
having  been  driven  by  family  misfor- 
tunes in  his  youth,  on  the  breaking  up 
of  his  home,  to  seek  employment  as  a 
gardener  in  the  neighborhood  of  Ed- 
inburgh, whence  he  travelled  to  Ayr- 
shire, and  after  some  employment  in 
gardening  took  a  lease  of  seven  acres 
of  land  hard  by  the  town  of  Ayr,  with 
the  intention  of  carrying  on  the  busi- 
ness of  a  nurseryman.  He  married  in 
December,  1757,  Agnes  Brown,  the 
daughter  of  a  Carrick  farmer,  whom 
he  brought  to  reside  in  a  humble  clay 
cottage  which  he  had  built  with  his 
own  hand  on  his  land.  On  that  spot, 
within  a  short  distance  of  two  famous 
objects  celebrated  in  his  writings,  the 
bridge  of  Boon  and  Kirk  Alloway, 
the  poet,  Robert  Burns,  was  born,  on 
the  25th  of  January,  1759.  The  cot- 
tage, which  now  presents  a  pretty  sta- 
ble appearance  to  the  observation  of 
literary  pilgrims,  at  the  time  of  Rob- 
ert's birth  was  but  a  crude  attempt  at 
architecture,  for  a  few  nights  after  that 
evont,  tire  gable  was  driven  out  in  a 

204) 


severe  storm,  and  the  building  so  shat 
tered  that  the  mother  was  compelled 
to  flee  with  her  son  through  the  in 
clemency  of  the  weather  and  take  re 
fuge  in  a  neighbor's  house. 

The  father  of  the  poet  was  a  man 
of  integrity  and  strength  of  character, 
and  had  that  trait  of  the  best  Scot- 
tish peasantry,  which  has  done  so  much 
to  raise  them  in  the  estimation  of  the 
world,  a  high  regard  for  the  value  of 
education  to  his  children.  He  is  de- 
scribed by  his  son  as  possessed,  from 
his  many  wanderings  and  sojournings, 
of  "  a  pretty  large  quantity  of  obser 
vation  and  experience."  He  had  met 
with  few,  he  says,  "  who  understood 
men,  their  manners  and  their  ways 
equal  to  him,"  and  that  he  was  in- 
debted to  him  "  for  most  of  his  little 
pretensions  to  wisdom."  The  world 
know  something  of  the  man  and  of  his 
earnest  religious  feelings  from  that 
genial  picture  of  a  Scottish  peasant's 
household,  "  The  Cotter's  Saturday 
Night,"  in  which — 

Kneeling  down  to  heaven's  eternal  King, 
The  saint,  the  father  and  the  husbaml  prays 

The  poem  was  inspired  by  the  author's 
vivid  impressions  of  the  simple  sei 


ROBERT  BURNS. 


205 


vices  daily  before  him  at  home.  It  is 
customary  to  refer  the  abilities  of  men 
of  genius  to  qualities  derived  from  their 
mothers,  perhaps  without  sufficient  ex- 
amination of  the  claims  of  their  fathers : 
but  Burns  certainly  owed  much  to  Ms 
father ;  while  he  was  no  doubt  also 
greatly  indebted  to  his  mother,  the 
worthy,  patient,  affectionate  wife  who 
relieved  the  hours  of  wearisome  toil 
by  chaunting  the  old  ballads  of  Scot- 
land, one  of  which  in  particular  as  it 
came  from  her  lips,  "  The  Life  and  Age 
of  Man,"  made  a  great  impression  upon 
Robert,  and  is  said  to  have  left  its 
traces  in  his  well-known  lyric,  "  Man 
was  made  to  Mourn." 

At  the  time  of  the  birth  of  the 
poet,  his  father,  not  having  succeeded 
in  establishing  the  nursery  which  he 
proposed,  engaged  as  gardener  and 
overseer  to  a  gentleman  who  had  a 
small  estate  in  the  neighborhood  He 
continued  in  this  position  for  six  or 
seven  years  and  acquitted  himself  so 
well  in  it  that  at  the  expiration  of  that 
time  Mr.  Ferguson,  his  employer,  leas- 
ed him  a  farm  of  about  seventy  acres 
called  Mount  Oliphant,  assisting  him 
with  a  loan  for  stocking  it,  and  the 
next  twelve  years  of  his  life  were  pass- 
ed in  laborious  and  unprofitable  efforts 
in  its  cultivation.  The  land  was  of 
the  poorest  quality,  involving  the  fa- 
ther with  his  increasing  family  in  a 
hard  fight  for  existence — a  contest 
which  he  maintained  with  heroic  reso- 
lution that  he  might  assist  his  children 
at  home.  In  1777  this  barren  farm  was 
left  for  another  named  Lochlea,  with  a 
better  soil,  some  ten  miles  distant ;  but 
difficulties  arose  respecting  the  lease, 
the  elder  Burns  was  harassed  by  a  law- 


suit growing  out  of  them,  and  in  this 
state  of  perplexity  and  despair,  ruined 
in  fortune,  died  a  broken-hearted  man 
in  1784.  The  period  of  these  strug- 
gles, twenty-five  years,  passed  in  hard 
ship  and  privation,  fully  developed 
the  character  of  Robert  Burns,  one  of 
Scotland's  greatest  poets.  It  is  a  mis- 
take to  rank  him  at  any  time  of  his 
life  with  rude,  uneducated  peasant 
poets.  He  had  humble  fortunes,  want, 
penury,  involving  coarse  and  hard  labor, 
to  contend  with ;  it  was  a  wonderful 
thing  for  him  to  arise  to  the  height  of 
literary  excellence  which  he  attained, 
requiring  that  species  of  inspiration 
which  is  called  genius ;  but  from  his 
earliest  years  he  was  never  without 
some  good  influences  of  education  and 
even  of  literature  and  learning.  In 
his  sixth  year  he  was  sent  to  a  school 
in  the  vicinity  of  his  birth-place  at  Al- 
loway  Miln,  kept  by  a  teacher  named 
Campbell,  and  when  this  person  left 
to  take  charge  of  the  workhouse  at 
Ayr,  William  Burns,  Robert's  father, 
with  several  of  his  neighbors,  engaged 
a  new  instructor  to  take  his  place. 
This  was  John  Murdoch,  a  man  wor- 
thy of  honorable  mention  in  the  biog- 
raphy of  Burns.  He  was  of  an  ami- 
able disposition,  skilled  in  grammatical 
studies,  with  an  excellent  knowledge  of 
French,  indeed  a  proficient  in  that  lan- 
guage, having  taught  it  in  France  and 
being  the  author  of  one  or  two  books 
on  its  pronunciation  and  orthography. 
After  two  or  three  years  Murdoch  left 
Ayrshire  for  another  part  of  the  coun- 
try. 

In  the  absence  of  the  teacher  the 
father  supplied  his  place.  When  the 
labors  of  the  day  were  over,  he  instruo 


206 


KOBEBT   BURNS. 


tied  his  children  in  the  evening  in  arith- 
metic. He  taught  them  something  of 
history  and  geography  from  Salmon's 
Geographical  Grammar,  and  of  astrono- 
my and  natural  history  from  Derham's 
Physics  and  Astro-Theology  and  Ray's 
Wisdom  of  God  in  the  Creation,  all  of 
which  works  he  borrowed  for  the  occa- 
sion. Robert,  we  are  told,  read  all  these 
books  with  avidity  and  industry,  and 
any  others  which  fell  in  his  way  as  he 
grew  up.  The  collection  was  not  a 
large  one,  but  it  was  sufficiently  mis- 
cellaneous, including  Stackhouse's  His- 
tory of  the  Bible,  from  which  he  gath- 
ered a  knowledge  of  ancient  history ;  a 
collection  of  English  letters  by  the  most 
eminent  writers,  which  set  him  upon 
epistolary  composition,  in  which  he  af- 
terwards became  a  great  proficient ;  and, 
within  a  few  years,  Richardson's  Pame- 
la, which  was  the  first  novel  he  read; 
Smollett's  Peregrine  Pickle  and  Count 
Fathom,  some  plays  of  Shakespeare, 
The  Spectator,  Pope's  translation  of 
Homer,  Locke  on  the  Human  Under- 
standing, Hervey's  Meditations,  with 
several  others,  the  most  important  of 
which  were  the  works  of  Allan  Ram- 
say, and  a  collection  of  English  songs, 
entitled  the  Lark.  These,  with  that 
accompaniment  to  all  Scottish  homes, 
however  humble,  the  Holy  Bible,  cer- 
tainly afforded  no  mean  mental  nour- 
ishment to  a  youth  of  genius.  Nor 
was  this  all  the  direct  education  the 
future  poet  received.  His  father,  still 
careful  for  his  instruction,  after  the 
withdrawal  of  Murdock,  sent  him  to  a 
school  at  Dalrymple,  two  or  three  miles 
away,  to  gain  improvement  in  his  hand- 
writing, and  when  Murdock  some  time 
ifter  w  as  settled  as  master  of  the  Eng- 

D 


lish  school  in  the  town  of  Ayr,  Robert 
passed  three  weeks  with  him,  which 
were  employed  in  revising  his  gram- 
matical studies,  and  gaining  some 
knowledge  of  French,  a  study  which 
he  pursued  with  such  zeal,  that  he  was 
in  a  short  time  able  to  read  any  ordi- 
nary prose  in  the  language.  To  Latin 
he  took  less  kindly,  making  very  tri- 
fling progress  in  that  tongue. 

All  this  was  much,  very  much,  for  a 
youth  who  was  constantly  engaged 
from  sheer  necessity  in  toiling  in  the 
farm  labor  to  assist  his  overworked 
parent  in  gaining  the  daily  bread  of 
the  family.  He  worked  faithfully  and 
industriously,  assisted  his  parents  with 
his  best  efforts,  and  found  his  solace  in 
the  gratification  of  his  tender  humane 
disposition — for  we  read  that  he  was 
kind  above  measure  to  the  young  reap- 
ers in  the  field,  and  that  the  very  cat- 
tle were  affectionately  treated  by  him — 
and  he  had  moreover  the  old  Scottish 
songs  to  cheer  him,  and  his  growing  ac- 
quaintance with  the  wealth  of  English 
literature.  But  above  all,  there  was 
early  developed  in  him,  with  a  fervor 
of  passion  inconceivable  by  a  duller 
nature,  a  romantic  and  engrossing  love 
of  woman.  This  was  the  great  solace 
of  his  life,  and  this  was  the  first  and 
most  constant  inspiration  of  his  muse. 

The  poet's  course  after  this  time,  as 
the  boy  was  developed  into  the  man, 
was  upward  and  onward.  The  rugged 
farm  life  was  somewhat  mitigated  under 
his  father's  lease  of  the  new  land  at 
Lochlea,  in  the  parish  of  Tarbolton. 
The  lease  was  continued  for  seven 
years  and  ended,  as  we  have  seen,  in 
failure  and  bankruptcy,  with  the  death 
of  the  elder  Burns  This  period  em 


EGBERT  BURKS. 


207 


braced  the  life  of  Robert  from  his 
nineteenth  to  his  twenty-sixth  year. 
It  furnishes  a  number  of  incidents  of 
much  interest  in  his  history,  relating  to 
his  opening  acquaintance  with  the 
world,  his  observations  of  life  and  the 
development  of  his  poetic  faculty.  It 
has  been  thought  worth  recording  by 
his  biographers  that  at  the  age  of 
eighteen  he  was  taught  dancing,  a 
fact  perhaps  of  some  importance  in 
reference  to  his  subsequent  free  par- 
ticipation in  country  revels  and  junk- 
etings, in  which  he  picked  up  many  a 
subject  for  his  muse.  A  circumstance 
of  at  least  equal  consequence  was  his 
being  sent  at  nineteen  by  his  parents 
to  learn  mensuration  and  surveying 
from  a  noted  mathematician  who  kept 
a  school  at  Kirkoswald,  on  the  Carrick 
coast,  overlooking  the  Firth  of  Clyde. 
It  was  his  mother's  parish,  and  Robert 
was  sent  to  stay  with  an  uncle  residing 
there.  The  place  was  famous  for 
smuggling,  and  Burns  added  consider- 
ably to  his  knowledge  of  what  is  called 
"  life,"  by  the  acquaintance  which  he 
made  with  the  wild  revellers  who  car- 
ried on  the  contraband  trade.  "  Scenes 
of  swaggering  riot  and  roaring  dissi- 
pation," says  he,  "  were  till  this  time 
new  to  me ;  but  I  was  no  enemy  to 
social  life.  Here,  though  I  learnt  to 
fill  my  glass,  and  to  mix  without  fear 
in*  a  drunken  squabble,  yet  I  went  on 
with  a  high  hand  in  my  geometry,  till 
the  sun  entered  Virgo,  a  month  which 
is  always  a  carnival  in  my  bosom, 
when  a  charming  fillette,  who  lived  next 
door  to  the  school,  overset  my  trigo- 
nometry and  set  me  off  at  a  tangent 
from  the  sphere  of  my  studies.  I, 
however,  struggled  on  with  my  sines 


and  co-sines  for  a  few  days  more ;  but 
stepping  into  the  garden  one  charming 
noon  to  take  the  sun's  altitude,  there 
I  met  my  angel, 

'  Like  Proserpine,  gathering  flowers, 
Herself  a  fairer  flower.' 

It  was  in  vain  to  think  of  doing  any 
more  good  at  school.  The  remaining 
week  I  stayed,  I  did  nothing  but  craze 
the  faculties  of  my  soul  about  her,  or 
steal  out  to  meet  her;  and  the  two 
last  nights  of  my  stay  in  the  country, 
had  sleep  been  a  mortal  sin,  the  image 
of  this  modest  and  innocent  girl  had 
kept  me  guiltless."  The  rustic  damsel 
who  produced  this  extraordinary  effect 
upon  the  youthful  enthusiast  was 
named  Peggy  Thompson. 

But  the  time  of  Burns  was  not  all 
given  to  love  and  mathematics.  He 
had  an  acquaintance  in  a  fellow  schol- 
ar with  whom  he  walked  apart  and 
discussed  various  questions  of  manners 
and  morals,  such  as  form  the  staple  of 
the  exercises  in  youthful  debating  so 
cieties.  The  master  heard  of  this,  and 
undertook  to  rebuke  what  he  consid- 
ered their  nonsensical  disputations. 
The  topic  of  the  day  upon  which  he 
fell  foul  of  them,  happened  to  be, 
"  Whether  a  great  general  or  a  respec- 
table merchant  was  the  most  valuable 
member  of  society."  He  laughed  at 
this  as  incomparably  silly,  when  Burns 
proposed  to  him  that  if  he  would  take 
either  side  of  the  question,  he  would 
maintain  the  other  before  the  school. 
The  mathematical  pedagogue  in  an  evil 
moment  assented,  and  took  up  the  de- 
fence of  the  military  hero,  when  Burns 
bore  down  upon  him  so  triumphantly 
with  his  eloquent  assertion  of -the  pi*e 


208 


ROBERT   BURNS. 


tensions  of  the  merchant,  that  the  dis- 
comfited master  was  compelled  to  break 
up  the  house  in  confusion.  Under  or- 
dinary circumstances,  the  anecdote 
would  not  be  worth  much,  for  no  wise 
school-master  would  risk  a  contest  be- 
fore an  audience  of  his  own  scholars — 
but  it  exhibits  in  Burns  an  unusual  de- 
velopment of  the  logical  and  conversa- 
tional powers  which  greatly  distin- 
guished him  in  after  life.  At  Kirkos- 
wald,  also,  Burns  studied  various  hu- 
mors of  men,  particularly  of  a  certain 
Douglas  Graham,  somewhat  addicted  to 
smuggling,  and  his  superstitious  wife, 
Helen  McTaggart,  living  on  their  farm 
of  Shanter — who  subsequently  furnish- 
ed the  poet  with  the  leading  characters 
of  his  immortal  "  Tarn  O'  Shanter."  The 
poet  likewise  at  this  time  added  to  his 
store  of  reading  the  works  of  Thomson 
and  Shenstone,  both  fruitful  in  his  lit- 
erary growth ;  while  on  leaving  the 
place  he  engaged  several  of  his  school- 
fellows to  keep  up  a  correspondence 
with  him.  "  This,"  he  says,  "  improv- 
ed me  in  composition.  I  had  met  with 
a  collection  of  letters  by  the  wits  of 
Queen  Anne's  reign  (already  alluded 
to),  and  I  pored  over  them  most  de- 
voutly :  I  kept  copies  of  any  of  my  own 
letters  that  pleased  me ;  and  a  compar- 
ison between  them  and  the  composition 
of  most  of  my  correspondents  flattered 
my  vanity.  I  carried  this  whim  so  far, 
that  though  I  had  not  three  farthings' 
worth  of  business  in  the  world,  yet  al- 
most every  post  brought  me  as  many 
letters  as  if  I  had  been  a  broad  plod- 
ding son  of  day-book  and  ledger." 

On  his  settling  down  again  at  the 
paternal  farm,  Burns,  faithful  to  his 
labors  in  ploughing  and  tilling,  yet 


found  time  for  social  amusements  and 
mental  improvement,  which,  with  his 
cordial  disposition,  he  pursued  with 
his  friends.  In  the  year  1780,  we  find 
him  engaged  in  planning  and  conduct- 
ing a  "  Bachelors'  Club  "  at  Tarbolton, 
with  his  brother  and  some  half  dozen 
other  associates,  young  men  of  the  place, 
who  met  to  discuss  familiar  topics  of 
every-day  life,  among  which  love  and 
matrimony  seem  to  have  held  an  espe- 
cial place. 

One  of  the  members  of  this  "  Bache- 
lors' Club,"  was  David  Sillar,  a  young 
man  with  something  of  the  poetic  fac- 
ulty, who  is  numbered  among  the  po- 
ets of  Scotland,  having  published  a 
volume  of  verses  at  Kilmarnock,  some 
years  after  the  date  of  the  events  we 
are  recording,  in  1789.  He  was  an  in- 
telligent associate  of  Burns,  was  on 
intimate  terms  at  his  father's  house, 
and  accompanied  the  poet  on  his  walks, 
discussing  topics  of  high  import,  till 
one  of  the  fair  sex  came  in  sight,  when, 
farewell  to  discourse  and  companion- 
ship. Burns  was  by  the  side  of  the 
charmer  in  a  moment,  talking  with  her 
with  an  ease  and  freedom  of  conversa- 
tion which  Sillar  confesses  that  he  ad- 
mired and  envied.  With  this  social 
development,  came  now  and  then  a 
new  book  or  two,  and  all  of  the 
right  sort,  fit  aliment  for  the  poet's 
mental  and  moral  growth.  Foremost 
among  these  he  mentions  as  his  "  bos- 
om favorites,"  the  works  of  Sterne  and 
Mackenzie,  "  Tristram  Shandy "  and 
"  The  Man  of  Feeling,"  the  latter,  he 
says  about  this  time,  on  another  occa- 
sion, "  I  prize  next  to  the  Bible ;" 
while  of  the  writings  of  Sterne,  he  es 
pecially  singles  out  for  admiratloi 


ROBERT   BURJSTS. 


209 


that  most  exquisite  of  all  novelettes, 
"  Tlie  Sentimental  Journey." 

New  loves  were  in  the  meantime  in- 
spiring new  poems.  "  Poesy,"  he 
writes,  "was  still  a  darling  walk  for 
my  mind,  but  it  was  only  indulged  in 
according  to  the  humor  of  the  hour. 
I  had  usually  half-a-dozen  or  more 
pieces  on  hand ;  I  took  up  one  or  the 
other,  as  it  suited  the  momentary  tone 
of  the  mind,  and  dismissed  the  work  as 
it  bordered  on  fatigue.  My  passions, 
when  once  lighted  up,  raged  like  so 
many  devils,  till  they  got  vent  in 
rhyme ;  and  then  the  conning  over  my 
verses,  like  a  spell,  soothed  all  into 
quiet." 

Meanwhile,  in  his  twenty-third  year, 
he  attempted  a  diversion  from  the  rug- 
ged home  agricultural  life,  with  a  view 
of  bettering  his  fortunes  and  with  the 
honorable  motive  of  placing  himself  in 
a  situation  to  marry.  He  had,  with 
his  brother  Gilbert,  for  several  years, 
cultivated  a  portion  of  the  farm  in 
raising  flax  on  their  own  account.  He 
thought  he  could  add  to  his  profits  by 
engaging  in  the  business  of  flax-dress- 
ing. He  accordingly  joined  himself  to 
a  flax-dresser  in  the  neighboring  town 
of  Irvine,  and  wrought  for  six  months 
at  the  new  occupation,  which  he  found 
in  accordance  with  neither  his  health 
nor  inclination.  "  It  was  an  unlucky 
affair,"  he  says,  in  his  autobiography, 
and  had  a  characteristic  ending.  "  To 
finish  the  whole,  as  we  were  giving  a 
welcome  carousal  to  the  new  year,  the 
shop  took  fire  and  burnt  to  ashes,  and 
I  was  left,  like  a  true  poet,  not  worth  a 
sixpence."  While  at  Irvine,  he  became 
a  freemason,  and  was  consequently  in- 
troduced to  a  more  convivial  life  than 
27 


that  to  which  he  had  been  accustomed, 
and  made  the  acquaintance  of  some 
reckless  persons  who  led  him  something 
astray  from  the  simplicity  of  his  fath- 
er's household.  A  more  noticeable  ac- 
quaintance, however,  than  any  other 
which  he  made  at  Lochlea,  was  that  of 
that  thoroughly  Scottish  poet,  Robert 
Ferguson,  who  taught  him  how  to  em- 
ploy his  muse  upon  the  characters  of 
familiar  every-day  life.  He  preceded 
Burns  in  authorship  some  fifteen  years, 
and  in  the  words  of  Chambers,  "  may 
be  considered  his  poetical  progenitor." 
What  Ferguson  had  done  for  the  town 
humors  of  Edinburgh,  his  successor 
was  soon  to  accomplish,  with  greater 
unction,  for  the  provincial  life  of  Ayr 
shire.  Returning  to  Lochlea,  he  wit- 
nessed in  sorrow,  almost  in  despair, 
the  hardships  and  misfortunes  of  the 
last  few  years  of  his  venerated  father's 
life. 

Immediately  after  the  death  of  this 
parent,  in  the  spring  time  of  1784, 
Robert  and  his  brother  Gilbert  entered 
upon  the  cultivation  of  a  farm  in  the 
neighboring  parish  of  Mauchline, which 
they  had  engaged  in  anticipation  of 
the  bankruptcy  proceedings  of  the  land- 
lord at  Lochlea.  This  was  Mossgiel,  a 
spot  memorable  in  the  poet's  history, 
for  there,  during  his  two  years'  resi- 
dence, he  produced  some  of  his  most 
felicitous  poems,  and  there  too  formed 
his  acquaintance  with  Jean  Armour, 
whom  he  celebrated  in  verse  as  fore- 
most among  the  belles  of  Mauchline ; 
with  whom  he  engaged  in  an  irregular 
attachment,  and  to  whom,  after  much 
embarrassment  from  their  illicit  inter 
course,  he  was  finally  married.  "  It  is 
a  remarkable  circiimstance,"  writes 


210 


ROBERT  BURKS. 


Robert  Chambers  in  Ms  exhaustive 
memoir  of  Burns,  "that  the  mass  of 
the  poetry  which  has  given  this  extra- 
ordinary man  his  principal  fame,  burst 
from  him  in  a  comparatively  short 
space  of  time — certainly  not  exceeding 
fifteen  months.  It  began  to  flow  of  a 
sudden,  and  it  ran  on  in  one  impetuous 
brilliant  stream,  till  it  seemed  to  have 
become,  comparatively  speaking  ex- 
hausted." The  period  thus  denoted 
was  between  the  poet's  twenty-sixth 
and  twenty-eighth  years. 

Somehow,  about  this  time,  the  poet 
got  athwart  the  clergy,  and  satirized 
the  old  Calvinistic  spirit  as  it  ran 
counter  to  the  latitudinarian  tenden- 
cies of  the  New  Lights,  as  the  members 
of  the  moderate  party,  which  about 
that  time  arose  in  the  Scottish  church, 
were  called.  The  poet  had  been  senti- 
mental and  playful  in  his  earlier  effu- 
sions; but  in  such  compositions  as 
"  Holy  Willie's  Prayer  "  he  showed  the 
power  and  severity  of  his  muse.  There 
was  a  fiery  element  in  the  soul  of  this 
high-spirited  plowman,  keen  and  sub- 
tle as  that  of  Dante,  on  occasion.  Con- 
trasting with  the  bitter  but  humorous 
satire  of  the  poems  to  which  we  allude, 
are  such  productions  as  that  happy 
rustic  idyll  "Halloween,"  and  the 
heartfelt  home  beauty  of  religion  in 
her  best  attire  in  "  The  Cotter's  Satur- 
day Night."  Take  one  other  poem  of 
the  series  where  all  are  excellent, "  The 
Jolly  Beggars,"  upon  the  whole,  per- 
haps, in  its  peculiar  kind,  the  finest 
exhibition  of  the  author's  powers,  in 
which  character,  manners,  a  novelist's 
description  of  real  life  humorous  to 
the  highest  degree,  with  a  high  gusto 
of  poetical  expression,  are  penetrated 


throughout  by  a  glowing  imagination. 
It  is  a  Teniers  picture  of  low  life  of 
the  richest  warmth  and  coloring. 

Singularly  enough,  this  poem,  now 
one  of  the  most  valued  of  the  author's 
works,  was  for  a  long  time  denied  a 
place  in  the  collection.  It  does  not 
appear  in  the  Kilmarnock  or  Edin- 
burgh editions  of  the  poet's  lifetime, 
or  in  that  prepared  by  Dr.  Currie  after 
his  death.  The  subject  and  its  hand- 
ling are  peculiarly  adapted  for  artistic 
illustration.  The  poem  fortunately  at- 
tracted the  attention  of  George  Cruik- 
shank,  when  at  the  height  of  his  powers. 
His  series  of  etchings  in  illustration  of 
the  operetta,  for  such  it  is,  admirably 
supplements  its  rare  humors.  Every 
one  must  regret  that,  in  consequence  of 
the  early  neglect  to  produce  the  poem 
in  print,  two  of  its  songs,  connected  by 
a  few  verses  of  recitative  matter  ex- 
hibiting the  character  of  a  chimney 
sweep  and  a  sailor,  omitted  by  the  au- 
thor after  the  first  copy,  have  been  ir- 
recoverably lost. 

The  exercise  of  his  faculties  in  po- 
etry must  have  been  to  Burns  during 
these  months  of  1784  and  1785  his  best 
consolation,  for  his  farming  operations, 
in  spite  of  his  efforts  and  the  prudence 
of  his  brother,  were  proving  a  failure, 
and  he  had  entangled  himself  in  the 
most  unhappy  manner  in  his  love  affair 
with  Jean  Armour.  She  was  about  to 
become  a  mother.  Her  father  was  in- 
exorable, refusing  to  accept  a  written 
acknowledgment  of  her  as  his  wife 
given  by  Burns,  a  document  which, 
according  to  the  law  of  Scotland,  was 
sufficient  to  constitute  a  valid  though 
irregular  marriage.  He  had  no  ex 
pectation  of  good  fortune  from  a  thrift- 


EGBERT  BURNS. 


211 


less  poet,  and  induced  Ms  daughter 
to  forsake  a  man  who  might  now  have 
been  considered  as  her  husband.  The 
unhappiness  growing  out  of  these  cir- 
cumstances cast  Burns  into  the  deepest 
misery,  of  which  we  have  the  most 
touching  expression  in  his  poem  enti- 
tled "  The  Lament,  occasioned  by  the 
unfortunate  issue  of  a  friend's  amour." 
"In  this  perplexity  he  turned  his 
thoughts  to  exile  in  the  new  world, 
resolving  to  go  to  the  West  Indies, 
where  many  of  his  countrymen  were 
employed  on  the  plantations  as  over, 
seers.  He  made  his  preparations  and 
actually  engaged  himself  as  book- 
keeper to  a  Mr.  Douglas,  on  his  estate 
in  Jamaica.  To  raise  money  for  his 
passage,  it  was  suggested  to  him  that 
he  should  publish  his  poems  by  sub- 
scription. There  was  naturally  much 
that  was  pleasing  to  him  in  the  pro- 
posal. "I  was  pretty  confident,"  he 
writes,  "my  poems  would  meet  with 
some  applause ;  but,  at  the  worst,  the 
roar  of  the  Atlantic  would  deafen  the 
voice  of  censure,  and  the  novelty  of 
West  Indian  scenes  make  me  forget 
neglect." 

This  was  in  the  spring  of  1736.  Sub- 
scription papers  for  an  edition  of  his 
poems  were  printed  and  circulated 
among  the  author's  friends,  who  now 
numbered  most  of  the  cultivated  gen- 
tlemen, professional  and  others,  of  Ayr- 
shire. While  the  proposals  were  being 
distributed  the  author  penned  several 
new  poems,  reflecting  with  much  deli- 
cacy and  feeling  the  melancholy  which 
now  oppressed  him.  One  of  these  is 
among  the  best  known  and  most  high- 
ly appreciated  of  his  compositions,  the 
verses,  'To  a  Mountain  Daisy,  on  turn. 


ing  one  down  with  the  plow  in  April, 
1786."  By  the  side  of  the  beautiful 
picture  in  the  poem  of  the  lark  spring- 
ing blithely  upward  "  to  greet  the  pur- 
pling east,  "  and  the  lowly  beauty  of 
the  tender  flower  crushed  in  the  fur- 
row, we  read  in  the  poet's  broken  af- 
'fections  the  secret  of  this  sympathy 
with  nature.  This  poem  we  are  told 
by  the  poet's  brother  Gilbert  was  com- 
posed on  the  occasion  and  while  the 
author  was  holding  the  plow,  "hold- 
ing the  plow  being  a  favorite  situation 
with  Robert  for  poetic  compositions, 
and  some  of  his  best  verses  produced 
while  he  was  at  that  exercise."  There 
is,  indeed,  a  free  open-air  flavor  about 
them  all. 

The  titles  of  other  poems, "  Despond- 
ency," "  To  Ruin,"  are  equally  suggest- 
ive of  sorrow  and  suffering.  An 
"  Epistle  to  a  young  friend,"  the  son 
of  his  patron  Robert  Aiken,  also  bears 
witness  to  the  poet's  generous  nature, 
magnanimous  alike  in  its  penitence 
and  manly  aspirations. 

There  are  other  poems  in  the  au- 
thor's first  collection  tinged  with  the 
melancholy  of  this  period  of  the  au- 
thor's life,  as  that  dirge  of  humanity, 
"  Man  was  Made  to  Mourn." 

We  are  not  to  suppose,  however, 
that  Burns,  overpowering  as  seemed  to 
be  his  afflictions,  was  wholly  given  up 
to  melancholy.  The  same  force  of 
imagination  which  aggravated  his 
sense  of  disappointment  and  stimu- 
lated those  feelings  of  remorse  which 
only  a  generous  nature  can  feel  in  their 
intensity,  hurried  him  at  other  mo-. 
ments  into  a  vivid  enjoyment  of  the 
fleeting  pleasures  of  the  hour.  He 
was  easily  inoved  as  ever  by  the  f  h arras 


212 


ROBERT  BURNS. 


of  love  and  friendship.  If  lie  was  for 
tne  time  deserted  by  his  "  bonny  Jean," 
his  friends,  who  warmly  appreciated 
bis  poetical  productions  and  had  the 
warmest  affection  for  the  man,  were 
faithful.  Nor  was  the  elegiac  poet 
without  resources  in  his  distress  with 
that  sex  which  was  associated  with  so 
much  of  his  misery.  A  new  passion 
on  the  instant  took  possession  of  his 
heart.  Rejected  by  the  Armours,  he 
turned  his  thoughts  to  a  young  girl  of 
his  acquaintance,  Mary  Campbell,  "  a 
sweet,  sprightly,  blue-eyed  creature," 
of  decent  Highland  parentage,  whose 
early  and  unhappy  death  awakened  all 
the  poet's  sympathies  and  is  commem- 
orated in  one  of  the  finest  of  his  lyrics. 
In  a  short  time  the  subscription  to 
the  poems  was  sufficient  to  secure  an 
arrangement  for  their  publication  with 
John  Wilson,  a  bookseller  at  Kilmar- 
nock.  Six  hundred  copies  were  print- 
ed, of  which  three  hundred  and  fifty 
Were  subscribed  for  before  the  work  was 
issued,  about  the  beginning  of  August, 
1786.  The  remainder  were  rapidly 
disposed  of,  twenty  pounds  falling  to 
the  author  after  all  expenses  were  paid. 
A  part  of  the  proceeds  was  appropri- 
ated to  a  steerage  passage  in  a  vessel 
which  was  to  sail  from  Greenock  to 
Jamaica  in  September.  Happily  the 
sailing  of  the  ship  was  delayed  and 
in  the  interim  the  rapid  success  of  the 
volume  of  Poems  inspired  the  author 
with  new  hopes  and  led  to  the  aban- 
donment of  the  voyage  altogether. 
The  merits  of  the  thirty-six  poems 
which  composed  the  volume,  com- 
mencing with  that  exquisitely  humor- 
ous and  truthful  picture  of  high  and 
low  life,  "TheTwa  Dogs,"  and  includ- 


ing such  striking  exhibitions  of  geniua 
and  originality  as  "Poor  Maillie," 
"Halloween,"  "The  Holy  Fair,"  with 
the  various  songs  and  epistles,  were 
not  to  be  mistaken.  The  variety  was 
extraordinary  in  the  forms  of  com- 
position and  the  spirit  which  animated 
them  "  from  grave  to  gay,  from  lively 
to  severe."  There  was  rare  descrip- 
tive talent,  invention  in  incident,  char- 
acter and  grouping,  philosophical  re 
flection,  sentiment  and  satire  in  song 
and  story.  The  subtlest  humor,  the 
lively  current  of  the  blood,  ran  through 
the  whole.  The  subjects  were  famil- 
iar, personal,  domestic  and  patriotic. 
There  was  not  a  bright  intellect  or  a 
feeling  heart  in  all  Scotland  which 
could  be  insensible  to  their  treatmeot. 
It  was  a  book  for  all  classes,  which 
could  be  appreciated  by  the  educated 
and  uneducated,  for  it  united  the 
rarest  simplicity  with  the  purest  art. 
Among  the  persons  in  the  poet's  neigh 
borhood  who  appreciated  the  volume 
was  a  clergyman  of  the  moderate  party, 
the  Rev.  George  Lawrie,  who  was  in 
intimate  communication  with  a  num- 
ber of  the  distinguished  literati  of 
Edinburgh.  He  sent  a  copy  of  the 
poems  to  one  of  these  personages  who 
was  held  in  great  esteem  as  a  critic, 
the  Rev.  Dr.  Blacklock — a  character 
of  some  note  in  the  metropolis,  for 
though  blind  from  his  infancy,  he  had 
attained  celebrity  as  a  poet  and  cler 
gyman,  and  was  universally  esteemed 
for  his  amiability.  He  received  the 
gift  with  a  genuine  expression  of  ap- 
plause. "  There  is,"  he  said  in  the  let- 
ter which  he  sent  in  return,  "  a  pathos 
and  delicacy  in  the  serious  poems,  a 
vein  of  wit  and  humor  in  those  of  a 


EGBERT  BUKNS. 


212 


more  festive  turn,  which  cannot  be  too 
much  admired,  nor  too  warmly  ap- 
proved; and  I  think  I  shall  never 
open  the  book  without  feeling  my  as- 
tonishment renewed  and  increased." 
The  effect  of  this  letter  upon  the  poet 
in  awakening  his  ambition  may  be 
imagined,  coming  as  it  did  with  other 
flattering  evidences  of  the  hold  he  had 
taken  upon  influential  persons  of  emi- 
nence. He  is  presently  entertained 
by  Professor  Dugald  Stewart  at  his 
villa  near  Mossgiel,  where  he  is  intro- 
duced to  a  lord,  a  son  of  the  Earl  of 
Selkirk,  a  circumstance  which  he 
thought  of  importance  enough  to  be 
celebrated  in  verse. 

The  critical  Dr.  Blair  also  admired, 
pronouncing  "  The  Holy  Fair,"  a  work 
"  of  a  very  fine  genius,"  and  the  poet 
gained  from  the  "  Cotter's  Saturday 
Night,"  the  friendship  of  a  lady, 
Mrs.  Dunlop,  of  Dunlop,  a  lineal  de- 
scendant of  the  hero  Wallace,  which 
was  perpetuated  in  an  uninterrupted 
correspondence  through  his  life.  En- 
couraged by  these  and  the  like  atten- 
tions, Burns  resolved  upon  the  publi- 
cation of  a  new  edition  of  his  poems 
under  his  own  supervision  at  Edin- 
burgh. He  set  out  for  the  capital, 
some  sixty  miles  distant  from  his 
home  in  Ayrshire,  in  the  latter  end  of 
November,  riding  on  a  pony  borowed 
for  the  occasion  from  his  friend  and 
neighbor  at  Ayr,  Mr.  Dalrymple.  On 
his  way  he  received  what  in  the  news- 
paper language  of  the  present  day  is 
sailed  an  ovation.  By  previous  ar- 
rangement he  was  to  rest  at  the  close 

O 

of  his  first  day's  travel  at  the  house  of 
one  of  the  admirers  -of  his  poetry,  a 
Mr  Prentice,  in  a  village  of  Lanark- 


shire. A  late  dinner  was  provided,  at 
which  the  farmers  of  the  parish  "were 
assembled  and  kept  up  the  festivity 
in  honor  of  their  guest  into  the  early 
hours  of  the  morning.  "  Scotch  drink  " 
we  may  be  sure  flowed  pretty  freely 
on  the  occasion.  The  host  was  no  half- 
way appreciator  of  the  poet.  A  strict- 
ly moral  and  religious  man  himself,  he 
said  on  one  occasion  when  somebody 
was  talking  of  an  apologist  for  Burns 
— "  What !  do  they  apologize  for  him ! 
One-half  of  his  good,  and  all  his  bad, 
divided  among  a  score  o'  them,  would 
make  them  a'  the  better  men  ! " 

On  his  arrival  at  Edinburgh  he 
took  refuge  in  the  humble  hospitality 
of  a  former  acquaintance  in  Ayrshire 
who  had  been  a  clerk  to  his  friend 
Hamilton,  but  who  was  now  a  writer's 
apprentice  in  the  city.  The  two  now 
occupied  a  common  room  and  bed. 
Burns  seems  to  have  passed  his  first 
days  in  wanderings  about  the  town 
and  surveying  the  wonders  of  the 
scene  from  Arthur's  Seat  to  the  castle. 

He  hunted  up  the  unmarked  grave 
of  Ferguson  in  the  church-yard  of  the 
Canongate  and  kneeling  down  kissed 
the  sod  which  covered  his  remains. 
Before  he  left  the  city  he  took  care 
that  a  stone  should  be  erected  on  the 
spot  for  which  he  wrote  a  poetical  in- 
scription. He  owed  many  a  hint  in  the 
composition  of  his  poems  to  Ferguson, 
and  there  is  something  very  pleasing 
in  this  prompt  payment  of  the  debt 
of  gratitude.  He  also  sought  out  the 
house  which  had  been  occupied  by 
Allan  Ramsay  and  took  off  his  hat  on 
entering  it.  Not  many  days  passed 
before  the  poet  was  brought  into  no- 
tice. His  masonic  brotherhood  here, 


214 


ROBERT   BURNS. 


as  on  other  occasions,  served  him.  He 
was  introduced  by  his  friend  Dalrym- 
ple,  who  appears  to  have  been  as  much 
at  home  in  Edinburgh  as  at  Ayr,  at  a 
lodge  meeting,  to  the  Hon.  Henry 
Erskine,  Dean  of  the  Faculty  of  Ad- 
vocates, a  great  favorite  in  the  metrop- 
olis, who  proved  a  powerful  supporter 
of  the  poet.  Of  still  more  value  to  him 
was  the  friendship  of  the  Earl  of 
Glencairn,  who  having  previously  in- 
troduced the  Kilmarnock  volume  to 
the  notice  of  his  friends,  now  made 
the  author  at  home  in  his  family  and" 
assisted  him  greatly  in  the  publication 
of  the  new  edition  of  his  poems.  He 
not  only  found  a  publisher  for  the 
work  in  the  bookseller  Creech,  but  in- 
duced the  members  of  the  Caledonian 
Club  to  take  each  a  copy  at  a  guinea, 
four  times  the  ordinary  subscription 
price.  For  Lord  Glencairn,  Burns  al- 
ways entertained  the  greatest  admira- 
tion. No  one  of  his  readers  can  forget 
(;he  noble  "Lament"  which  he  wrote 
in  the  occasion  of  his  early  death  four 
years  later. 

Writing  to  his  friend  Hamilton  on  the 
7th  of  December,  a  week  after  his  ar- 
rival in  Edinburgh,  Burns  says :  "  For 
my  own  affairs,  I  am  in  a  fair  way  of  be- 
coming as  eminent  as  Thomas  a  Kempis 
or  John  Bunyan ;  and  you  may  expect 
henceforth  to  see  my  birth-day  inserted 
among  the  wonderful  events  in  the 
Poor  Robin's  and  Aberdeen  Almanacs, 
along  with  the  Black  Monday  and  the 
battle  of  Bothwell-Bridge.  By  all  proba- 
bility, I  shall  soon  be  the  tenth  worthy 
and  the  eighth  wise  man  of  the  world." 
Among  the  notables  who  were  the  first 
to  welcome  him,  was  Henry  Macken- 
zie, the  author  of  the  "  Man  of  Feel- 


ing," who  had  become  acquainted  with 
his  poems  through  Professor  Stewart. 
The  notice  of  no  one  could  have  been 
more  acceptable  to  Burns ;  from  his  ear- 
liest school  days  he  had  been  an  admirer 
of  that  author's  works,  and  they  had 
no  unimportant  influence  in  forming 
his  tastes  and  directing  his  sensibili- 
ties. To  be,  thus  early  in  his  literary 
career,  cherished  and  applauded  by 
one  to  whom  he  had  looked  up  with  a 
feeling  little  short  of  reverence,  must 
have  moved  in  no  ordinary  degree  the 
gratitude  of  a  man  who  was  always 
sensitive  to  the  slightest  manifestation 
of  kindness ;  and  still  more  must  this 
attention  have  been  felt  when  the 
whole  reading  world  of  the  day  was 
invited  to  share  in  it.  Mackenzie,  ripe 
in  fame  and  the  affections  of  all  Scot- 
land, was  then  engaged  in  publishing 
his  classic  series  of  periodical  essays  in 
the  style  of  the  Spectator,  entitled  The 
Lounger.  In  the  number  of  the  work 
for  the  9th  of  December,  he  introduced 
a  critique  of  Burns'  Kilmarnock  volume. 
A  better  service  could  not  have  been 
rendered  to  the  poet,  than  by  this 
thoughtful,  sympathetic  article.  It  sep- 
arated the  poet  at  once  from  the  humble 
class  of  writers  springing  up  in  lowly 
stations,  whose  chief  claims  to  be  notic- 
ed arose  from  the  feeling  of  surprise  that, 
under  such  circumstances,  they  should 
possess  any  merit  whatever.  Brush- 
ing this  suggestion  aside,  he  placed  the 
author  at  once  on  the  highest  level  of 
the  literature  of  his  country.  He  fully 
recognized  the  genius  of  this  "  heaven- 
taught  ploughman,"  as  he  described  him, 
in  depicting  the  manners  of  men  and  ex- 
hibiting their  passions  in  action,  in  a 
style  which  recalled  to  him  the  power 


EGBERT  BURNS. 


•21ft 


and  method  of  the  greatest  of  drama- 
tists—" that  intuitive  glance  with  which 
a  writer  like  Shakespeare  discerns 
tbe  characters  of  men,  with  which  he 
catches  the  many  -  changing  hues  of 
life,  forming  a  sort  of  problem  in  the 
science  of  mind,  of  which  it  is  easier  to 
see  the  truth  than  to  assign  the  cause." 
These  are  the  very  elements  of  genius ; 
and  he  who  would  thoroughly  under- 
stand that  much  abused  term,  may  find 
it  illustrated  in  a  very  remarkable  man- 
ner, in  a  study  of  the  life  and  writ- 
ings of  Robert  Burns. 

Within  a  few  weeks  the  poet,  "  the 
lion  of  the  season,"  was  at  home  in  the 
best  society  of  the  metropolis,  passing 
from  his  humble  quarters  in  the  room 
which  he  still  shared  with  his  compan- 
ion, the  poor  apprentice,  to  the  fashion- 
able drawing-rooms  where  he  met  such 
persons  as  Dr.  Robertson,  Dr.  Blair, 
Dr.  Gregory,  Dr.  Adam  Ferguson,  and 
other  magnates  of  the  University.  Lord 
Monboddo  often  had  him  at  his  house 
and  table,  where  he  fell  into  an  exces- 
sive admiration  of  the  lovely  daughter 
of  that  eccentric  scholar,  Miss  Eliza 
Burnet,  whom  he  has  immortalized  in 
that  noble  "  Address  to  Edinburgh," 
in  which  he  more  than  repaid  all  the 
attentions  and  honors  which  were  lav- 
ished upon  him.  On  returning  from 
a  first  visit  to  Lord  Monboddo's  house, 
he  was  asked  by  a  friend,  "  Well,  and 
did  you  admire  the  young  lady  ?"  "  I 
admired  God  Almighty  more  than 
ever !"  was  the  reply ;  "  Miss  Burnet  is 
the  most  heavenly  of  all  his  works." 
This  sentiment  is  incorporated  in  the 
poem  "  To  Edinburgh,"  in  which  the 
lady  is  introduced  in  the  midst  of  a 
glowing  represertation  of  the  wealth, 


the  architecture,  the  business,  the  pride 
and  importance  of  the  historic  monu- 
ments of  the  city. 

The  new  edition  of  the  poems  was 
published  in  April  with  a  dedication  to 
its  liberal  patrons,  "the  noblemen  and 
gentlemen  of  the  Caledonian  Hunt," 
a  dedication  very  unlike  the  old  venal, 
nattering  addresses  which  are  prefixed 
to  too  many  volumes  of  the  earlier  Brit- 
ish poets,  his  predecessors.  Conscious 
of  his  powers,  the  poet  unhesitatingly 
takes  his  position  before  the  world,  in 
his  own  words,  as  a  Scottish  bard, 
proud  of  the  name,  and  whose  highest 
ambition  is  to  sing  in  his  country's  ser- 
vice. "  The  poetic  genius  of  my  country 
(he  adds)  found  me,  as  the  prophetic 
bard  Elijah  did  Elisha,  at  the  plough, 
and  threw  her  inspiring  mantle  ovei 
me.  She  bade  me  sing  the  loves,  tht 
joys,  the  rural  scenes  and  rural  pleas 
ures  of  my  native  soil,  in  my  native 
tongue.  I  tuned  my  wild  artless  notes 
as  she  inspired."  Two  thousand  eight 
hundred  copies  of  the  work  were  sub- 
scribed for  by  fifteen  hundred  sub 
scribers,  an  extraordinary  proof  of  the 
interest  excited  by  the  poet  in  the 
wealthy  and  influential  classes.  The 
piofit  of  the  author  on  a  settlement 
with  his  bookseller,  was  about  six 
hundred  pounds.  With  the  means 
now  at  his  disposal,  after  a  residence 
in  Edinburgh  of  about  six  months, 
Burns  left  with  a  young  friend,  Mr. 
Ainslie,  whose  acquaintance  he  had 
made  in  the  city,  for  a  tour  through 
the  south-eastern  part  of  the  country, 
following  the  line  of  the  Tweed,  cross 
ing  into  Northumberland  to  Aln- 
wick  and  Newcastle,  and  returning  in- 
to  Scotland  from  Carlisle.  On  Iris 


2i6 


ROBERT   BURNS. 


way  lie  visited  several  persons  of  ce- 
lebrity, including  the  traveller  Bry- 
done,  and  at  Jedburg  was  presented 
with  the  freedom  of  the  town.  July  saw 
him  with  his  family,  at  the  farm  at 
Mossgiel,  which  he  left  a  few  days  af- 
ter his  arrival  for  Edinburgh,  and  a 
tour  by  Stirling  and  Inverary,  on  his 
way  round  to  his  home  again.  In  the 
autumn,  he  journeyed  along  the  eastern 
region  by  Inverness  and  Aberdeen,  and 
the  next  year  passed  much  of  his  time  in 
Edinburgh,  where  he  was  for  awhile  un- 
der the  care  of  a  surgeon,  in  consequence 
of  an  injury  to  his  knee  from  the  over- 
turning of  a  hackney  coach.  This  gave 
him  opportunity  for  reflection ;  he  saw 
his  prospects  clouded  and  fell  into  the 
most  gloomy  forebodings.  His  half- wife, 
as  she  might  be  termed,  Jean  Armour, 
was  again  to  become  a  mother,  which 
provoked  fresh  unkindness  on  the  part 
of  her  father,  and  brought  about  the  for- 
mal ceremony  of  a  marriage  between  her 
and  the  poet.  Though  he  had  become  a 
regular  contributor  to  the  collection  of 
Scottish  songs  published  by  James 
Johnson,  in  the  plan  of  which,  with 
its  revival  of  the  old  national  airs  with 
appropriate  adaptations  of  the  old 
words  or  with  new  compositions,  he 
took  much  interest,  he  does  not  seem 
to  have  looked  to  literature  as  a  pro- 
fession. Indeed,  he  contributed  his  po- 
ems to  that  work  out  of  pure  affection 
for  the  cause,  without  fee  or  reward. 
His  thoughts  were  still  turned  to  his 
former  farming  occupations  as  a  means 
of  livelihood.  Concluding  a  negotia- 
tion which  had  been  for  some  time  in 
progress,  in  the  spring  of  1788,  he  en- 
tered upon  the  possession  of  the  new 
farm  of  Elliesland.  in  Dumfrieshire 


where  he  was  for  many  months  em 
ployed  in  constructing  a  simple  cot- 
tage, barely  meeting  the  necessities  of 
his  mode  of  life.  In  December,  he  waa 
joined  by  his  wife  and  children,  and 
early  in  the  following  year,  occupied 
his  new  house.  His  success  as  a  farm- 
er, notwithstanding  his  earnest  efforts, 
was  not  very  encouraging.  That  re- 
quired closer  calculation  and  more 
methodical  industry  than  were  to  be 
expected  from,  the  temperament  and 
intellectual  habits  of  the  poet.  He 
consequently  was  soon  compelled  to 
seek  some  additional  means  of  living. 
While  at  Edinburgh,  he  had  secured  a 
commission  in  the  excise  department, 
which  had  given  him  some  employ- 
ment in  the  Ayr  district ;  he  was  now 
appointed  excise  officer  in  the  district  in 
which  he  resided.  While  discharging 
these  two-fold  duties  of  farmer  and  ex- 
ciseman, he  was  contributing  songs  to 
Johnson's  collection  and  producing  va- 
rious minor  occasional  poems.  An  ac- 
cidental visit  to  the  region  of  the  Eng- 
glish  antiquary,  Captain  Grose,  led  to 
the  composition  of  one  of  the  most  ad- 
mired and  perhaps  the  best  known  of 
his  works,  the  tale  of  Tarn  O'Shanter. 
Grose  with  his  comical  obese  figure  was 
a  humorist  of  the  first  water,  abounding 
in  anecdote  and  merry  stories.  Burns 
met  him  at  a  friend's  house,  was  de- 
lighted with  his  social  qualities,  and 
took  a  pleasant  view  of  the  object  of 
his  journey,  which  was  to  sketch  and 
describe  the  antiquities  of  the  country. 
With  some  quizzing,  there  is  a  deal  of 
kindly  feeling  in  the  poem  which  he 
wrote  on  this  redoubtable  knight  er 
rant's  "  peregrinations  through  Scot 
land." 


ROBEKT   BUKNS. 


217 


Seeing  these  predilections,  Burns 
bethought  himself  of  the  old  kirk  at 
Alloway,  the  familiar  scene  of  his 
childhood  and  the  burial  place  of  his 
father,  and  suggested  the  old  ruin  as  a 
suitable  illustration  for  Grose's  book, 
recommending  it  as  the  scene  of  various 
ghostly  legends.  The  antiquarian 
promised  to  insert  a  sketch  of  the  place 
if  Burns  would  furnish  a  witch  story 
to  accompany  it.  This  he  undertook 
to  do  and  Tarn  o'  Shanter  was  the  re- 
sult, composed  in  one  day  while  the 
poet  was  "  crooning  to  himself"  by  the 
banks  of  the  Nith,  which  ran  by  his 
abode.  The  poem,  gathering  up  the 
humors  of  a  life-time,  the  quintessence 
of  many  a  study  of  provincial  life,  thus 
made  its  first  appearance  in  Grose's 
Antiquities  of  Scotland.  No  one  can 
think  of  the  burly  antiquarian 
without  an  emotion  of  gratitude  for 
his  having  been  the  occasion  of  that 
poem ;  nor  of  the  engraver,  Johnson's, 
and  its  sequel  George  Thomson's  enter- 
prize,  without  recollecting  what  we  in- 
cidentally owe  to  them  for  calling  forth 
that  wondrous  series  of  Songs,  fam- 
iliarized in  every  Scottish  and  English 
household  in  the  world,  which  should 
cover  with  a  redeeming  mantle  of  char- 
ity any  errors  of  the  poet's  life.  What 
a  splendid  galaxy  in  the  literary 
heaven  they  form — the  songs  of  Burns 
sacred  to  love  and  friendship,  to  pa- 
triotism and  humanity,  to  history  and 
common  life,  breathing  the  warmest 
28 


affections,  inspired  by  the  noblest  sen- 
timents. Were  it  only  for  "  Brace's 
Address  to  his  Army  at  Bannock- 
bum,"  Scotland  could  never  forget 
him ;  were  it  only  for  "  John  Anderson 
my  Joe,"  the  universal  heart  of  home 
•would  take  him  to  its  embrace. 

The  ode  commemorative  of  Bannock- 
burn  was  written  while  the  poet  re- 
sided at  Dumfries,  his  last  place  of 
abode,  whither,  having  given  up  his 
farm  of  Elliesland  as  unprofitable,  he 
had  gone  in  1791  to  be  engaged  exclu- 
sively in  the  discharge  of  his  duties  as 
exciseman  with  an  income  which 
reached  about  seventy  pounds  a  year. 
He  passed  his  time  here  actively  em- 
ployed in  his  offi.ce,  which  did  not  pre- 
vent his  partaking  freely  in  such  some- 
what reckless  convivialities  as  the  so- 
ciety of  the  place  afforded,  doubtless 
to  the  prejudice  of  his  health  ;  and  in 
engaging,  not  a  little  to  the  injury  of 
any  prospect  of  advancement  in  office 
he  might  have  had,  in  the  political 
fervors  of  the  day  in  behalf  of  demo- 
cratic liberty  engendered  by  the  en- 
thusiasm  of  the  French  Revolution.  In 
the  autumn  of  1795  he  exhibited  symp- 
toms of  failing  health,  which  increased 
at  intervals  during  the  ensuing  months 
not  without  provocation  from  repeated 
indulgences,  till,  on  the  21st  of  July, 
1796,  he  breathed  his  last  at  his  home 
in  Dumfries.  So  fell  at  the  age  of 
thirty-seven  the  greatest  of  Scotland'* 
poets. 


CHARLOTTE     CORDAY. 


THE  fair  assassin  heroine  of  the 
French  Revolution,  Charlotte 
Corday,  was  born  in  the  village  of 
Ligneres,  near  d'Argentan,  in  Nor- 
mandy, in  1768.  She  was  of  noble 
family, — Marie  Anne  Charlotte  Cor- 
day D'  Armans,  as  she  was  called  be- 
fore the  revolution  had  extinguished 
mch  titles,  and  she  was  the  grand- 
daughter of  the  great  French  dramatic 
writer,  Corneille.  Her  father,  Francois 
de  Corday  d' Armans,  was  one  of  those 
small  landed  proprietors  of  the  old 
system,  whose  privileges  secured  them 
respect,  while  they  were  on  the  verge 
of  poverty.  In  the  midst  of  his  agri- 
cultural labors,  with  a  family  growing 
up  about  him,  he  felt  the  pressure  of 
want,  and  sharing  the  growing  dis- 
content of  the  times,  enlisted  himself 
on  the  side  of  the  reform  movement  in 
progress.  Imbued  with  the  new  social 
philosophy,  he  wrote  pamphlets  against 
despotism  and  the  law  of  primogeni- 
ture. His  daughter  was  thus  indoc- 
trinated in  her  infancy  in  the  princi- 
ples of  the  coming  era  in  France. 
Her  mother  dying  while  her  family  of 
five  children  were  quite  young,  Char- 
lotte was  left  with  her  two  sisters,  as 
she  is  described  by  Lamartine,  to  live 

(218) 


on  for  some  years  at  Ligneres  ''  almost 
running  wild,  clothed  in  coarse  cloth, 
like  the  young  girls  of  Normandy,  and, 
like  them,  working  in  the  garden, 
making  hay,  gleaning  and  gathering 
the  apples  on  the  small  estate  of  their 
father."  At  the  age  of  thirteen  she 
became  an  inmate  of  an  ancient  and 
well-appointed  monastery  at  Caen, 
where,  with  the  enthusiasm  of  her 
nature  and  her  pious  disposition, 
she  would  probably  under  ordinary 
circumstances  have  heartily  submitted 
to  the  genius  of  the  place ;  but  the 
newborn  philosophy  of  the  times 
had  found  its  way  in  the  popular 
writings  of  the  day  into  its  retirement, 
and  Charlotte  became  deeply  imbued 
with  its  broad  humanitarian  spirit. 
The  convents,  moreover,  were  being 
suppressed,  and  she  had  to  seek  an- 
other home.  Thus,  with  new  views, 
but  with  old  conservative  traditions 
hanging  about  her,  at  nineteen  she 
was  driven  into  the  world.  Her  fa- 
ther had  now  become  still  poorer.  Her 
two  brothers  in  the  king's  service  had 
emigrated ;  one  of  her  sisters  was  dead, 
the  other  managed  her  father's  home 
at  Argentan.  Charlotte  was  adopted 
by  an  old  aunt,  Madame  Brettevillev 


OHAKLOTTE  COKDAY. 


219 


and  went  to  live  with  her  in  her  old 
home  at  Caen.  There,  while  assisting 
in  the  domestic  duties  of  the  place, 
she  had  abundant  leisure  to  indulge 
in  her  favorite  reading  of  romances 
and  the  writings  of  the  philosophers 
then  in  vogue.  She  became  familiar 
with  the  works  of  Rousseau  and  Ray- 
nal,  and  entered  heartily  into  the  re- 
vived study  of  Plutarch,  by  whose 
lives  of  the  heroes  of  antiquity  France 
was  then  fashioning  herself.  She  had 
soon  the  motive  and  incentive  to  ex- 
press her  visionary  ideas  in  action. 

It  was  early  in  1793,  and  the  Giron- 
dists, who  had  failed  in  their  aspira- 
tions to  place  liberty  on  a  rational 
foundation,  were  on  the  eve  of  their 
final  overthrow.  Overpowered  by  the 
fury  of  the  Jacobins,  flying  from  their 
impending  fate  in  Paris,  numbers  of 
them  had  taken  refuge  in  the  depart- 
ments and  were  endeavoring  to  rally 
the  nation  to  sustain  them  against  the 
ultra  revolutionary  party,  of  which 
the  vulgar,  blood-thirsty,  remorseless 
Marat  had  become  the  most  obnoxious 
leader.  This  fiend  in  human  shape, 
by  the  use  of  his  pen  in  constant  ap- 
peals to  the  people  in  arousing  their 
prejudices,  and  by  his  authority  in  the 
convention,  was  the  unflinching  oppo- 
nent of  the  Girondins,  and  would  be 
satisfied  with  nothing  less  than  their 
extermination.  His  character,  odious 
at  the  best,  was  not  likely  to  be  look- 
ed upon  with  other  feelings  than  those 
of  the  most  intense  hatred  and  dismay 
by  the  political  refugees  from  his  fury, 
gathered  at  Caen.  Among  the  leaders 
of  the  Girondins  assembled  there,  were 
Buzot,  Salles,  Petion,  Barbaroux,  Lou- 
yet,  who  sedulously  employed  them- 


selves in  arousing  opposition  to  the 
new  prescriptive  party  and  in  the  en- 
listment of  volunteers  for  an  army  to 
march  upon  Paris  for  its  overthrow. 
Charlotte  listened  eagerly  to  the  ac- 
cusations of  the  Girondins,  and  the 
portentous  shape  of  Marat  assumed 
gigantic  proportions  in  her  mind,  as 
the  one  great  enemy  of  the  liberty  of 
France.  The  utmost  ardor  of  her  na- 
ture was  excited  by  the  spectacle  of 
the  volunteers,  whose  departure  she 
witnessed  from  a  balcony  at  Caen.  A 
youth  who  warmly  admired  her,  and 
to  whom  she  had  given  her  portrait, 
was  among  the  number.  But  patriot- 
ism in  her  soul  burnt  with  a  keener 
flame  than  the  passion  of  love.  As 
she  saw  the  battalion  depart,  Petion, 
who  passed  at  the  moment  beneath  the 
balcony,  noticed  her  in  tears.  "  Would 
you  then  be  happy,"  said  he  to  her, 
"  if  they  did  not  depart  ?"  She  an- 
swered nothing,  blushed  and  withdrew. 
Her  resolve  was  taken,  at  all  hazards, 
herself,  alone,  to  free  France  from  the 
human  monster  that  appeared  to  her. 

The  prudence  and  secrecy  with 
which  she  went  about  the  fatal  work 
proved  the  strength  of  her  character. 
It  was  necessary  that  she  should  pre 
pare  herself  by  information  from  the 
Girondin  leaders,  and  she  sought  their 
presence  without  affording  them  the 
least  intimation  of  her  intentions. 
After  various  interviews  she  obtained 
from  Barbaroux  a  letter  to  Duperret 
at  Paris,  one  of  the  party  who  still 
held  his  seat  in  the  Convention.  There 
was  nothing  to  compromise  him  in  it. 
It  was  simply  a  letter  of  introduction. 
A  greater  seriousness  was  noticed  in 
her  conversation  and  demeanor  at  this 


220 


CHAKLOTTE   COEDAY. 


time.  Questioned  by  her  aunt,  she  said, 
"  I  weep  over  the  misfortunes  of  my 
country,  over  those  of  my  relatives,  and 
•  ver  yours.  Whilst  Marat  lives  no  one 
can  be  sure  of  a  day's  existence."  Her 
aunt  also  afterwards  called  to  mind 
going  into  her  room  to  awaken  her  in 
the  morning,  and  finding  on  her  bed 
an  open  Bible  at  a  passage  of  the 
book  of  Judith,  of  which  she  had 
marked  a  verse  with  a  pencil,  describ- 
ing the  going  forth  of  the  daughter  of 
Israel  in  her  beauty  to  deliver  the  land 
from  the  hand  of  Holofernes.  The 
entire,  vivid  narrative  "  beyond  all 
Greek,  all  Roman  fame,"  may  well 
have  been  her  inspiration. 

Armed  with  this  resolve,  on  the  7th 
of  July  of  this  memorable  year,  1793, 
when  the  revolution  developed  its  pro- 
Roundest  horrors,  Charlotte  visited 
Argentan  to  take  a  final  leave  of  her 
father  and  sister,  under  the  pretence  of 
joining  the  refugee  emigrants  in  Eng- 
land. Returning  to  her  aunt  she  told  her 
the  same  story  in  expectation  of  her 
departure  on  the  morrow,  which  she 
had  privately  arranged,  by  the  Paris 
diligence.  Very  touching  are  the  in- 
cidents of  her  last  hours  at  Caen  as  re- 
lated by  Lamartine.  They  were  "  filled 
with  gratitude,  attention  and  tender- 
ness towards  that  aunt,  to  whom  she 
owed  such  long  and  kind  hospitality, 
and  she  provided,  through  one  of  her 
friends,  for  the  old  servant  who  had 
taken  care  of  her  in  her  youth.  She 
ordered  and  paid  in  advance,  at  the 
tradespeople's  shops  in  Caen,  for  some 
little  presents  of  dresses  and  embroidery 
destined  to  be  worn  after  her  departure 
by  some  youthful  companions  of  her 
early  days.  She  distributed  her  favorite 


books  amongst  the  young  persons  of  hei 
acquaintance,  and  reserved  none  for  her- 
self but  a  volume  of  Plutarch,  as  if 
she  did  not  desire  to  separate  herself 
in  the  crisis  of  her  life,  from  the  society 
of  those  great  men  with  whom  she 
had  lived  and  wished  to  die.  Finally, 
on  the  9th  of  July,  very  early  in  the 
morning,  she  took  under  her  arm  a 
small  bundle  of  the  most  requisite  ar- 
ticles of  apparel,  embraced  her  aunt, 
and  told  her  she  was  going  to  sketch 
the  haymakers  in  the  neighboring  mea- 
dows. With  a  sheet  of  drawing  pa- 
per in  her  hand,  she  went  out  to  return 
no  more.  At  the  foot  of  the  stair- 
case she  met  the  child  of  a  poor  labor- 
er, named  Robert,  who  lodged  in  the 
house,  in  the  street.  The  child  was 
accustomed  to  play  in  the  court.  She 
sometimes  gave  him  little  toys.  '  Here ! 
Robert,'  said  she  to  him,  giving  him 
the  drawing  paper,  which  she  no  lon- 
ger required  to  keep  her  in  counte- 
nance, '  that  is  for  you ;  be  a  good 
boy  and  kiss  me ;  you  will  never  see 
me  again.'  And  she  embraced  the 
child,  leaving  a  tear  upon  his  cheek. 
That  was  the  last  tear  on  the  thresh 
hold  of  the  house  of  her  youth.  She 
had  nothing  left  to  give  but  her  blood." 
During  the  journey  in  the  diligence 
to  Paris,  there  was  nothing  to  excite 
in  her  fellow-travellers  any  suspicion 
of  a  disturbed  or  disordered  mind. 
She  was  perfectly  mistress  of  herself 
throughout.  During  the  first  day  she 
appeared  to  be  simply  entertaining  a 
little  girl  whom  chance  had  thrown 
by  her  side.  The  loud  professions  of 
attachment  on  the  part  of  the  passen- 
gers to  the  cause  of  the  Mountain  and 
its  grim  hero  Marat,  did  not  induce  hei 


CHARLOTTE   CORDAY. 


221 


by  any  unguarded  word  or  look  to  be- 
tray her  own  sentiments.  Her  beauty 
attracted  attention,  and  she  was, ques- 
tioned as  to  her  name  and  the  object  of 
her  journey  to  Paris ;  she  answered  eva- 
sively in  few  words,  sometimes  feign- 
ing sleep,  while  her  modesty  proved  to 
her  a  sufficient  guardian  from  further 
impertinence.  A  young  man  of  the 
party  with  a  respectful  freedom  ex- 
pressed his  affection  for  her  and  talked 
of  marriage.  She  rallied  him  on  this 
sudden  outburst  of  emotion  and  prom- 
ised to  let  him  hear  from  her  at  some 
later  time.  In  this  way,  winning  the 
regard  of  all  around  her,  she  entered 
Paris  on  the  llth  of  July,  at  noon, 
making  her  residence  at  the  Hotel  de 
la  Providence,  which  had  been  recom- 
mended to  her  by  her  friends  at  Caen. 
She  retired  early  and  slept  soundly  till 
the  next  day,  when,  attiring  herself  in 
a  simple  dress,  she  presented  herself 
at  the  lodgings  of  Duperret  with  the 
letter  of  introduction  from  Barbaroux. 
The  deputy  was  not  at  home  and  would 
be  away  all  day,  as  she  learnt  from  his 
daughters.  She  then  returned  to  her 
hotel  and  passed  the  time  in  solitude 
till  evening,  when  she  found  Duperret, 
and  requested  him  to  present  her  to 
Garat,  the  minister  of  the  interior; 
her  object  being  on  some  pretext  of 
business  to  gain  information,  by  con- 
versation with  the  leading  Girondists, 
which  might  assist  her  in  her  purpose 
to  serve  their  cause.  On  parting  with 
Duperret  for  the  night,  she  advised 
him  for  his  safety  to  quit  Paris  and 
join  his  brothers  of  the  party  in  Caen. 
He  replied  that  his  post  was  at  Paris 
and  he  would  not  leave  it.  "  You  are 
in  error,"  said  she ;  "  fly,  fly,  before  to- 


rn orrow  night."  On  the  morrow,  Du 
perret  called  on  her  at  her  lodging  to 
conduct  her  to  Garat ;  they  found  the 
minister  too  much  engaged  to  see  her 
before  evening.  Duperret  then  led  her 
to  her  residence,  where  he  left  her  at  the 
entrance.  Leaving  the  hotel  immedi- 
ately, she  made  her  way,  inquiring 
from  street  to  street,  to  the  Palais 
Royal,  where,  without  being  diverted 
from  her  purpose  by  the  frivolity  and 
gaiety  of  the  scene,  she  found  under 
the  galleries  the  shop  of  a  cutler,  where 
she  purchased  a  large  knife  which 
might  serve  for  a  dagger,  and  conceal- 
ed it  under  her  dress.  The  weapon 
was  intended  for  Marat.  She  had  at 
first  thought  of  reaching  him  when  he 
should  make  his  appearance  at  the  ap- 
proaching ceremony  of  the  federation, 
in  commemoration  of  the  triumph  of 
liberty,  to  be  held  in  the  Champ-de- 
Mars;  but  this  being  postponed,  she 
had  then  proposed  to  herself  to  strike 
her  victim  in  his  seat  at  the  convention 
at  the  head  of  his  party.  Learning 
from  Duperret  that  he  would  not  ap- 
pear there,  she  was  compelled  to  seek 
him  by  stratagem  at  his  private  lodg- 
ings. 

Continuing  the  story  in  the  words  of 
Lainartine  who  has  devoted  a  "  Book  " 
of  his  "  History  of  the  Girondists  "  to 
the  career  of  this  heroic  woman,  "  she 
returned  to  her  chamber  and  wrote  to 
Marat  a  billet,  which  she  sent  to  the 
door  of  l  the  friend  of  the  people.'  '  I 
have  just  arrived  from  Caen,'  she  wrote. 
*  Your  love  of  country  makes  me  pre- 
sume that  you  will  have  pleasure  in 
hearing  of  the  unfortunate  events  of 
that  portion  of  th(-  republic.  I  shall 
present  myself  at  your  abode  about 


222 


CHARLOTTE   CORD  AY. 


one  o'clock;  have  the  goodness  to  re- 
ceive me,  and  grant  me  a  moment's 
conversation.  I  will  put  you  in  a  po- 
sition to  be  of  great  service  to  France.' 
Charlotte,  relying  on  the  effect  of  this 
note,  went  at  the  appointed  hour  to 
Marat's  door,  but  could  not  obtain  ac- 
cess to  him.  She  then  left  with  the 
portress  a  second  note,  more  pressing 
aad  insidious  than  the  former.  1 1  wrote 
to  you  tnis  morning,  Marat,'  she  said ; 
'did  you  have  my  letter?  I  cannot 
believe  it,  as  they  refuse  me  admit- 
tance to  you.  I  hope  that  to-morrow 
you  will  grant  me  the  interview  I  re- 
quest. I  repeat  that  I  am  just  arrived 
from  Caen,  and  have  secrets  to  disclose 
to  you  most  important  for  the  safety 
of  the  republic.  Besides,  I  am  perse- 
cuted for  the  cause  of  liberty;  I  am 
unhappy,  and  that  I  am  so  should  give 
me  a  claim  on  your  patriotism.'  With- 
out awaiting  his  reply,  Charlotte  left 
her  chamber  at  seven  o'clock  in  the 
evening,  clad  with  more  than  usual 
care,  in  order,  by  a  more  studied  ap- 
pearance, to  attract  the  persons  about 
Marat.  Her  white  gown  was  covered 
over  the  shoulders  by  a  silk  scarf, 
which,  falling  over  her  bosom,  fastened 
behind.  Her  hair  was  confined  by  a 
Normandy  cap,  the  long  lace  of  which 
played  against  her  cheeks.  A  wide 
green  silk  riband  was  bound  round 
her  brows,  and  fastened  her  cap.  Her 
hair  fell  loose  down  her  back.  No 
paleness  of  complexion,  no  wildness  of 
gaze,  no  tremulousness  of  voice,  re- 
vealed her  deadly  purpose.  With  this 
attractive  aspect  she  knocked  at  Ma- 
rat's door. 

"  Marat  inhabited  the  first  floor  of  a 
dilapidated  house  in  the  Rue  des  Cor- 


deliers, now  Rue  de  1'  Ecole  de  Mede- 
cine.  His  apartment  consisted  of  an 
ante-chamber  and  a  writing-room,  look 
ing  out  on  a  narrow  courtyard,  a  small 
room  containing  his  bath,  a  sleeping- 
room  and  dining-room  looking  on  the 
street.  It  was  very  meanly  furnished. 
Numerous  publications  of  Marat's  were 
piled  on  the  floor, — the  newspapers  of 
the  day,  still  damp  from  the  press, 
were  scattered  about  on  the  chairs  and 
tables,  printers'  lads  coming  in  and 
going  out  incessantly,  women  employ- 
ed in  folding  and  addressing  pamph- 
lets and  journals,  the  worn  steps  of  the 
stair- case,  the  ill-swept  passages,  all 
attested  the  movement  and  disorder 
which  surround  a  man  much  occupied, 
and  the  perpetual  crowd  of  persons  in 
the  house  of  a  journalist  and  leader  of 
the  people.  This  misery,  though  a  dis 
play,  was  yet  real.  Marat's  domestic 
arrangements  were  those  of  an  humble 
artisan.  A  female,  who  controlled  his 
house  affairs,  was  originally  named 
Catherine  Evrard,  but  was  called  Al- 
bertine  Marat  from  the  time  when  the 
friend  of  the  people  had  given  her  his 
name,  taking  her  for  his  wife  one  day 
in  fine  weather,  in  the  face  of  open  sun- 
shine, after  the  example  of  Jean  Jacques 
Rousseau.  One  servant  aided  this 
woman  in  her  household  duties.  A 
messenger,  named  Laurent  Basse,  did 
the  out-door  work.  The  incessant 
activity  of  the  writer  had  not  relaxed 
in  consequence  of  the  lingering  disease 
which  was  consuming  him.  The  in- 
flammatory action  of  his  blood  seemed 
to  light  up  his  mind.  Now  in  his  bed, 
now  in  his  bath,  he  was  perpetually 
writing,  apostrophizing,  inveighing 
against  his  enemies,  whilst  exciting 


OHAKLOTTE   COKDAY. 


223 


the  Convention  and  the  Cordeliers. 
Offended  at  the  silence  of  the  Assembly 
on  the  reception  of  his  messages,  he 
had  recently  addressed  to  it  another 
letter,  in  which  he  threatened  the  Con- 
vention that  he  would  be  carried  in  his 
dying  condition  to  the  tribune,  that  he 
might  shame  the  representatives  with 
their  cowardice,  and  dictate  to  them 
fresh  murders.  He  left  no  repose  either 
to  himself  or  to  others.  Full  of  the  pre- 
sentiment of  death,  he  only  seemed  to 
fear  that  his  last  hour,  coming  on  too 
suddenly,  would  not  leave  him  time  to 
immolate  sufficient  criminals.  More 
anxious  to  kill  than  to  live,  he  hastened 
to  send  before  him  as  many  victims  as 
possible,  as  so  many  hostages  given  by 
the  knife  to  the  completed  revolution, 
which  he  desired  to  leave  free  from  all 
enemies  after  his  death.  The  terror 
which  issued  from  Marat's  house  re- 
turned thither  under  another  form— 
the  unending  dread  of  assassination. 
His  companion  and  his  intimate  asso- 
ciates believed  that  they  saw  as  many 
daggers  raised  against  him,  as  he  raised 
over  the  heads  of  three  hundred  thou- 
sand citizens.  Access  to  his  residence 
was  forbidden,  as  it  would  be  to  the 
palace  of  tyranny.  None  were  admit- 
ted to  his  presence  but  assured  friends 
or  denouncers  strongly  recommended, 
and  who  had  submitted  to  interroga- 
tories and  severe  examinations. 

"  Charlotte  was  not  aware  of  these 
obstacles,  although  she  apprehended 
them.  She  alighted  from  the  coach 
on  the  opposite  side  of  the  street,  in 
front  of  Marat's  residence.  The  day 
was  on  the  wane,  particularly  in  the 
quarter  darkened  by  lofty  houses  and 
narrow  streets.  The  portress  at  first 


refused  to  allow  the  young  unknown 
to  penetrate  into  the  courtyard.  She 
insisted,  however,  and  ascended  several 
stairs,  regardless  of  the  voice  of  the 
concierge.  At  these  sounds  Marat's 
mistress  half-opened  the  door,  and  re- 
fused to  allow  a  female  whom  she  did 
not  know  to  enter.  The  confused 
sound  of  the  altercation  between  these 
women,  one  of  whom  entreated  that 
she  might  be  allowed  to  speak  to  the 
friend  of  the  people,  whilst  the  other 
endeavored  to  close  the  door  in  her 
face,  reached  Marat's  ears,  who  com- 
prehended, by  the  few  indistinct  words 
that  reached  him,  that  the  visitor  was 
the  stranger  from  whom  he  had  re- 
ceived two  notes  during  the  day.  In 
a  loud  and  imperative  voice  he  ordered 
that  she  should  be  admitted.  Alber- 
tine,  either  from  jealousy  or  distrust, 
obeyed  with  much  ill-will  and  grum- 
bling. She  showed  the  young  girl  into 
the  small  closet  where  Marat  was,  and 
left,  as  she  quitted  her,  the  door  half- 
open,  that  she  might  hear  the  lowest 
whisper  or  the  smallest  movement  of 
the  sick  man.  The  room  was  faintly 
lighted.  Marat  was  in  his  bath,  yet 
in  this  forced  repose  of  his  body  he 
allowed  his  mind  no  leisure.  A  plank, 
roughly  planed,  laid  across  the  bath, 
was  covered  with  papers,  open  letters, 
and  half-written  articles  for  his  pub- 
lication. He  held  in  his  right  hand 
the  pen  which  the  arrival  of  the  un- 
known female  had  suspended  on  its 
page.  This  was  a  letter  to  the  Con- 
vention, to  demand  of  it  the  judgment 
and  proscription  of  the  last  Bourbons 
tolerated  in  France.  Beside  the  bath, 
on  a  large  block  of  oak,  was  a  leaden 
inkstand,  of  the  meanest  fabric - 


224 


CHAELOTTE   CORD  AY. 


foul  source  whence,  for  three  years, 
had  flowed  so  many  delirious  outpour- 
ings, so  many  denunciations,  so  much 
blood.  Marat,  covered  in  his  bath 
with  a  cloth  filthy  with  dirt  and  spot- 
ted with  ink,  had  only  his  head,  should- 
ers, the  upper  part  of  his  chest,  and  his 
right  arm  out  of  the  water.  There  was 
nothing  in  the  features  of  this  man  to 
affect  a  woman's  eye  with  tenderness, 
or  give  pause  to  a  meditated  blow. 
His  matted  hair,  wrapped  in  a  dirty 
handkerchief,  with  receding  forehead, 
protruding  eyes,  prominent  cheek- 
bones, vast  and  sneering  mouth,  hairy 
chest,  shrivelled  limbs,  and  livid  skin 
—  such  was  Marat.  Charlotte  took 
care  not  to  look  him  in  the  face,  for 
fear  her  countenance  might  betray  the 
horror  she  felt  at  his  sight.  With 
downcast  eyes,  and  her  arms  hanging 
motionless  by  her  side,  she  stood  close 
to  the  bath,  awaiting  until  Marat 
should  inquire  as  to  the  state  of  Nor- 
mandy. She  replied  with  brevity, 
giving  to  her  replies  the  sense  and  tone 
likely  to  pacify  the  demagogue's 
wishes.  He  then  asked  the  names  of 
the  deputies  who  had  taken  refuge  at 
Caen.  She  gave  them  to  him,  and  he 
wrote  them  down,  and  when  he  had 
concluded,  said  in  the  voice  of  a  man 
sure  of  his  vengeance,  l  Well,  before 
they  are  a  week  older,  they  shall  have 
the  guillotine  ! '  At  these  words,  as  if 
Charlotte's  mind  had  awaited  a  last 
offence  before  it  could  resolve  on  strik- 
ing the  blow,  she  drew  the  knife  from 
her  bosom,  and,  with  superhuman 
force,  plunged  it  to  the  hilt  in  Marat's 
heart.  She  then  drew  the  bloody 
weapon  from  the  body  of  the  victim, 
arid  let  it  fall  at  her  feet,  '  Help,  my 


dear — help  ! '    cried  Marat,   and  then 
expired." 

The  cry  brought  Albertine  and  the 
maid  servant  and  Laurent  into  the 
room,  where  Charlotte  was  standing, 
without  effort  at  escape.  Laurent  struck 
her  to  the  ground  with  a  blow  on  the 
head  from  a  chair,  and  Albertine  tram- 
pled upon  her.  The  aroused  popu- 
lace of  the  neighborhood  demanded 
that  the  assassin  should  be  cast  out  to 
them  for  speedy  revenge.  A  body  of 
soldiers  then  entered,  the  hands  of 
Charlotte  were  confined  by  cords,  and 
in  this  position,  amidst  the  impreca- 
tions of  the  household  of  her  victim, 
and  the  crowd  who  were  present,  re- 
plied to  the  usual  preliminary  interro- 
gations of  the  officer  of  justice,  calmly 
confessing  her  deed.  This  proceeding 
being  ended,  she  was  conducted  in  the 
hackney  coach  which  had  brought  her 
to  the  house,  to  the  Abbaye,  the  near- 
est prison.  An  excited  mob  filled  the 
street,  and  she  was  with  difficulty  pro- 
tected from  their  outrages.  On  a  second 
examination  at  the  prison,  she  was 
questioned  minutely  as  to  her  motives, 
proceedings,  and  accomplices.  To  this 
she  had  a  very  simple  reply  to  make. 
She  had  come  from  Caen  with  the  de- 
cided resolution  of  assassinating  Marat, 
and  had  communicated  her  intention 
to  no  one.  A  folded  paper  was  notic- 
ed fastened  in  her  dress.  It  proved  to 
be  an  address  which  she  had  prepared 
"  to  Frenchmen  friendly  to  the  laws  and 
peace."  In  this,  the  death  of  Marat  was 
spoken  of  as  already  accomplished,  and 
her  countrymen  were  called  upon  to 
leave  their  unhappy  divisions  and  arise 
for  the  redemption  of  France. 

Charlotte  was  presently  removed  to 


CHARLOTTE   COKDAY. 


225 


the  prison  of  the  Conciergerie.  She 
was  allowed  writing  materials  in  her 
prison,  and  addressed  a  long  letter,  re- 
counting the  circumstances  of  her  jour- 
ney, and  avowing  her  detestation  of 
Marat,  to  Barbaroux.  The  epistle  ex- 
presses her  strong  enthusiasm  and  a 
readiness  to  meet  the  fate  she  had  invi- 
ted in  behalf  of  her  country.  Its  hap- 
piness, she  said,  was  hers.  "  A  vivid 
imagination  and  a  sensitive  heart,"  she 
adds  with  a  philosophic  self-conscious- 
ness, "  promised  but  a  stormy  life ;  and 
I  pray  those  who  regret  me,  to  consid- 
er this,  and  rejoice  at  it."  Writing  to 
her  father,  she  asked  his  pardon  for 
the  course  she  had  taken,  while  she 
gloried  in  her  deed.  "  I  pray  of  you  to 
rejoice  at  my  fate — the  cause  is  noble. 
I  embrace  my  sister,  whom  I  love  with 
all  my  heart.  Do  not  forget  this  verse 
of  Corneille, — 

Le  crime  fait  lahonte  etnon  pasl'echafaud."* 

The  next  morning,  the  17th,  was 
that  appointed  for  her  trial.  The  hall 
of  the  revolutionary  tribunal  was  above 
the  prison.  On  being  conveyed  thith- 
er in  the  opening  scenes,  as  she  had 
done  before,  she  frankly  avowed  her 
act,  and  gloried  in  its  motive  and  suc- 
cess. Being  asked  how  long  she  had 
entertained  her  design,  she  said,  "  since 
the  last  day  of  May,  when  the  de- 
puties of  the  people  were  arrested.  I 
have  'killed  one  man  to  save  a  hundred 
thousand.  I  was  a  republican  long  be- 
fore the  Revolution.'1'1  The  counsel  who 


*  The  crime  and  not  the  scaffold  causes  shame. 
29 


had  been  assigned  her  could  urge  only 
in  her  behalf  the  excitement  of  politi- 
cal fanaticism.  She  was  not  displeased 
with  his  plea,  for  it  did  not  lessen  her 
dignity  or  detract  from  the  attitude  in 
which  she  wished  to  appear  before  the 
world.  While  in  prison  she  had  re- 
quested permission  to  sit  for  her  por- 
trait, that  her  memory  might  be  better 
perpetuated.  Observing  an  artist,  M. 
Hauer,  in  court,  sketching  her  likeness, 
she  turned  smilingly  toward  him,  to  as- 
sist him  in  his  purpose.  The  painter, 
at  her  request,  was  allowed  to  follow 
her  to  the  prison  to  finish  his  work. 
Before  it  was  accomplished,  the  execu- 
tioner knocked  at  the  door,  and  the 
painter,  his  work,  interrupted,  watched 
the  final  preparations  for  the  scaffold. 
Charlotte,  taking  the  scissors  from  the 
executioner,  cut  off  a  lock  of  her  long 
hair,  and  gave  it  to  the  painter,  who, 
was  so  struck  by  her  appearance  in 
the  red  chemise,  in  which  she  was  in- 
vested for  her  death,  that  he  subse 
quently  painted  her  in  that  costume. 
To  a  priest  sent  to  offer  the  last  ser- 
vices of  his  order,  she  said,  "  I  thank 
those  who  have  had  the  attention  to 
send  you,  but  I  need  not  your  ministry. 
The  blood  I  have  spilt,  and  my  own, 
which  I  am  about  to  shed,  are  the 
only  sacrifices  I  can  offer  the  Eter- 
nal." So  at  eve  of  the  day  of  her 
trial,  she  was  borne  to  the  guillotine. 
As  she  ascended  the  fatal  cart,  a  vio- 
lent storm  broke  over  the  city,  which 
gave  way  to  the  rays  of  the  setting 
sun  in  the  last  scene  upon  the  scaffold. 


JOHANN     WOLFGANG    GOETHE 


known  ancestry  of  Goethe 
on  the  paternal  side  ascends  to 
one  Hans  Christian  Goethe,  a  farrier 
in  the  middle  of  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury, in  the  little  German  town  of  Ar- 
tern,  in  Thuringia.  His  son  Frederick 
was  apprenticed  to  a  tailor,  and  in  the 
course  of  his  travels  from  place  to 
place,  according  to  the  custom  of  the 
country,  reached  Frankfort-on-the- 
Maine,  where  he  pursued  his  calling, 
was  admitted  to  citizenship,  and  "  be- 
ing a  ladies'  man,"  married  tbe  daugh- 
ter of  the  master  tailor.  A  second 
marriage  with  the  widow,  keeper  and 
wealthy  proprietor  of  a  hotel  changed 
his  vocation  to  that  of  the  landlord. 
By  this  union  he  had  two  sons,  the 
younger  of  whom,  Johann  Caspar,  was 
well  educated,  travelled  into  Italy,  and 
became  an  imperial  councillor  in 
Frankfort.  At  the  age  of  thirty-eight 
he  was  married  to  Kathrina  Eliza- 
beth, a  young  lady  of  seventeen,  the 
daughter  of  Johann  Wolfgang  Textor, 
of  a  distinguished  family  and  the 
chief  magistrate  of  the  city.  A  year 
after  this  marriage,  on  the  28th  of 
August,  1749,  their  son,  the  poet,  Jo- 
hann Wolfgang  Goethe,  was  born  at 
Frankfort. 


Both  parents  were  persons  cf  notico 
able  character.  The  father  is  describ- 
ed by  Goethe's  latest  and  best  biogra^ 
pher,  Lewes,  as  "  a  cold,  stern,  formal, 
somewhat  pedantic,  but  truth-loving, 
upright-minded  man.  He  hungered 
for  knowledge,  and  although  in  gen- 
eral of  a  laconic  turn,  freely  imparted 
all  he  learned.  In  his  domestic  circle 
his  word  was  law.  Not  only  imperious, 
but  in  some  respects  capricious,  he  was 
nevertheless  greatly  respected,  if  little 
loved,  by  wife,  children  and  friends." 
From  him  the  poet  inherited  the  well- 
built  frame,  the  erect  carriage  and  meas- 
ured movement  of  his  later  life,  with  the 
orderliness  and  stoicism  which  charac- 
terized him  through  life.  The  mother 
was  of  an  excellent  disposition  and 
genius,  "  her  simple,  hearty,  joyous  and 
aifectionate  nature  endearing  her  to 
all, — the  delight  of  children,  the  fa- 
vorite of  poets  and  princes."  Being 
but  eighteen  when  her  son  was  born, 
she  was  the  companion  of  his  youth. 
"  I  and  my  Wolfgang,"  she  said,  "  have 
always  held  fast  to  each  other,  because 
we  were  both  young  together."  She 
was  well  read  in  German  and  Italian 
literature,  of  great  vivacity  of  intel- 
lect, inventing  imaginative  stories  foi 


JOHA¥N  WOLFGANG  GOETHE. 


22S 


the  end,  something  to  his  mortification, 
losing  it.  At  this  he  is  said  to  have 
been  in  despair,  but  it  was  a  melan- 
choly which  soon  found  relief  in  the 
composition  of  a  few  lyrics  and  a  pas- 
toral play  in  which  he  introduced  his 
lovers'  quarrels — a  solace  to  which  he 
often  afterwards  resorted  in  similar 
circumstances,  and  which  never  failed 
him.  He  is  also  said  about  this  time 
to  have  had  some  experience  of  a  less 
reputable  kind  of  life,  not  at  all  of  the 
conventional  order,  where  human  na- 
ture was  to  be  seen  in  undress.  The  re- 
sult of  this  kind  of  observation  was  a 
dramatic  piece  which  is  published  in 
his  works  entitled  "  The  Fellow  Sin- 
ners," in  which  there  is  a  striking  com- 
bination in  wickedness  on  the  part  of 
all  the  characters. 

The  theatre  and  the  drama  now  oc- 
cupied much  of  his  attention,  with  a 
new  enthusiasm  excited  by  his  introduc- 
tion to  the  spirit  of  Shakespeare,  with 
whom  he  first  became  acquainted  in 
the  "  Beauties,"  selected  by  the  famous 
Dr.  Dodd.  He  was  vividly  impressed 
by  the  bold,  romantic  character  of  the 
great  English  dramatist,  and  his  fear- 
less reliance  upon  nature  as  distin- 
guished from  the  artificial  French 
school — a  powerful  influence  in  the 
formation  and  encouragement  of  his 
literary  convictions  at  this  period.  He 
also  acquired  some  knowledge  of  art, 
taking  lessons  in  drawing  from  Oeser, 
an  eminent  connoiseur,  who  had  been 
the  friend  and  instructor  of  Winckel- 
mann.  Falling  in  at  the  same  time 
with  the  "  Laocoon "  of  Lessing,  he 
eagerly  imbibed  the  admirable  philo- 
sophical distinctions  laid  down  in  that 
work  respecting  the  bounds  and  capac- 


ities of  poetry,  painting  and  sculpture 
To  enlarge  his  knowledge  of  the  sub- 
ject he  hurried  of?  secretly  to  Dresden 
to  inspect  its  gallery  of  the  old  mas- 
ters, where  he  was  more  impressed  with 
the  pictures  of  everyday  life  of  the 
Dutch  school  than  with  the  ideal  of 
the  Italian.  He  made  efforts  in  draw- 
ing, dabbled  in  engraving,  and  would 
have  been  an  artist  had  nature  second- 
ed his  aspirations ;  but  he  never  at- 
tained any  remarkable  success  in  this 
walk. 

After  about  three  years  spent  at 
Leipsic,  he  returned  to  Frankfort,  seri- 
ously affected  in  health,  which  his  bi- 
ographer attributes  to  "  dissipation, 
bad  d-iet  .(especially  the  beer  and  cof- 
fee) and  absurd  endeavors  to  carry  out 
Rousseau's  preaching  about  returning 
to  a  state  of  nature."  He  had  suffered 
from  a  violent  hemorrhage,  now  fol- 
lowed on  his  recovery  by  a  painful 
tumor  on  his  neck.  After  this  had 
yielded  to  surgical  treatment,  he  was 
afflicted  with  a  troublesome  stomach 
disorder,  for  the  relief  of  which  the 
family  physician,  who  would  appear 
to  have  been  something  of  a  quack, 
brought  out  as  a  final  remedy  a  cer- 
tain mysterious  salt  of  which  he  had 
come  to  the  knowledge  in  his  pursuit 
of  alchemy.  The  patient  consented  to 
take  the  prescription  and  recovered; 
when,  as  usual,  profiting  by  chance 
currents  in  the  sea  of  learning,  he 
threw  himself  vigorously  upon  the 
writings  of  Paracelsus,  Van  Helmont 
and  their  associates  in  the  vain  search 
after  the  philosopher's  stone — a  stu- 
dent's experience  reproduced  in  Faust. 
His  health  being  now  restored,  another 
effort  was  to  be  made  in  the  study  of 


230 


JOHAOT  WOLFGANG   GOETHE. 


jurisprudence,  and  with  the  design  of 
gaining  a  doctor's  degree,  he  was  sent 
to  Strasbourg. 

"  He  was  now,"  says  his  biographer, 
"  turned  twenty,  and  a  more  magnifi- 
cent youth,  never  perhaps  eLtered  the 
Strasbourg  gates.  Long  before  he  was 
celebrated,  he  was  likened  to  an  Apollo ; 
when  he  entered  a  restaurant,  the  peo- 
ple laid  down  their  knives  and  forks 
to  stare  at  him.  Pictures  and  busts 
give  a  very  feeble  indication  of  that 
which  was  most  striking  in  his  appear- 
ance; they  only  give  the  cut  of  fea- 
ture, not  the  play  of  feature ;  nor  are 
they  very  accurate  even  in  mere  form. 
The  features  were  large  and  liberally 
cut,  as  in  the  fine  sweeping  lines  of 
Greek  art.  The  brow,  lofty  and  mas- 
sive, from  beneath  which  shone  large 
lustrous  brown  eyes  of  marvelous 
beauty,  their  pupils  being  of  almost 
unexampled  size ;  the  slightly  aquiline 
nose  was  large  and  firmly  cut;  the 
mouth  fall,  with  a  short  arched  lip, 
very  expressive,  the  chin  and  jaw 
boldly  proportioned,  and  the  head 
resting  on  a  fine  muscular  neck : — de- 
tails which  are,  after  all,  but  the  in- 
ventory of  his  appearance,  and  give  no 
clear  image  of  it.  In  stature,  he  was 
rather  above  the  middle  size ;  but,  al- 
though not  really  tall,  he  had  the  as- 
pect of  a  tall  man,  and  is  usually  so 
described,  because  his  presence  was 
very  imposing.  His  frame  was  strong, 
muscular,  yet  sensitive.  Excelling  in 
all  active  sports,  he  was  almost  a  ba- 
rometer in  sensitiveness  to  atmospheric 
influences." 

With  personal  advantages  like  these, 
and  the  varied  education  he  had  al- 
ready acquired,  Strasbourg  readily  be- 


came a  new  theatre  of  mental  acquisi 
tions  and  of  social  conquests.     Love 
and  learning,  as  at  Leipsic,  divided  the 
young  poet's  attention.     Law,  as  be- 
fore, was  by  no  means  his  exclusive 
mistress.     We  find  him  heartily  en- 
gaged also  in  the  study  of  anatomy 
and  chemistry,  paying  particular  at- 
tention to  the  new  wonders  of   elec- 
tricity disclosed  by  Franklin.      Mys- 
tical philosophic  writings  occupied  his 
time,  with  a  special  devotion  to  that 
martyr    of    science,    the    pantheistic 
Bruno ;  while  he  gained  a  deeper  spi- 
ritual insight  from  an  intimacy  which 
he  formed  with  the  religious  enthu- 
siast, Jung  Stilling,  who  ever  after- 
wards remained  his  friend — an  associ- 
ation  of   signal  honor  to  Goethe   in 
the  estimation  of  his  character.     "  In- 
stinctively, he  sought  on  all  sides  to 
penetrate  the  mysteries  of  humanity, 
and,  by  probing  every  man's  experi- 
ence to  make  it  his  own.     Here  was  a 
poor  charcoal-burner,  who,  from  tailor- 
ing had  passed  to  keeping  a  school; 
that  failing,  he  had  resumed  his  needle ; 
and  having  joined  a  religious  sect,  had, 
in  silent  communion  with  his  own  soul, 
gained  for  himself  a  sort  of  culture 
which  raised  him  above  the  ordinary 
height  of  men : — what  was  there  in  hia 
life  or  opinions  to  captivate  the  riot- 
ous,   sceptical,    prosperous    student 7 
There  was  earnestness,  there  was  genu« 
ineness.     Sympathizing  with  Stilling 
listening  to  him,  and  dexterously  avoid 
ing  any  interference  with  his  religious* 
faith,  he  was  not  only  enabled  to  be 
his  friend,  but  also  to  learn  quietly  and 
surely  the  inner  nature  of  such  men." 
Goethe    formed    another    lasting    ac 
quaintance  at  Strasbourg  with  Herdeij 


JOHANN  WOLFGANG  GOETHE. 


231 


who  was  five  years  his  senior — an  im- 
portant difference  at  that  period  of 
life — who  taught  him  a  philosophical 
admiration  of  the  Hebrew  and  other 
national  poetry  to  its  latest  and  then 
fashionable  exhibition  in  Ossian. 

We  read  at  this  time  of  a  certain 
nervous  irritability,  in  overcoming 
which  he  exhibited  an  extraordinary 
resolution  and  self-control.  "  Loud 
sounds  were  disagreeable  to  him ;  dis- 
eased objects  aroused  loathing  and 
horror,  and  he  was  especially  troubled 
with  giddiness,  which  came  over  him 
whenever  he  looked  down  from  a 
height.  All  these  infirmities  he  re- 
solved to  conquer,  and  that  somewhat 
violently  In  the  evening  when  they 
beat  the  tattoo,  he  went  close  to  the 
drums,  though  the  powerful  rolling 
and  beating  of  so  many  seemed  enough 
to  make  his  heart  burst  in  his  bosom. 
Alone  he  ascended  the  highest  pinna- 
cle of  the  cathedral,  and  sat  in  what 
is  called  the  neck,  under  the  crown, 
for  a  quarter  of  an  hour  before  ventur- 
ing to  step  out  again  into  the  open  air. 
Standing  on  a  platform,  scarcely  an  ell 
square,  he  saw  before  him  a  boundless 
prospect,  the  church  and  everything 
upon  which  he  stood  being  concealed 
by  the  ornaments.  He  felt  exactly  as 
if  carried  up  in  a  balloon.  These  pain- 
ful sensations  he  repeated  until  they 
became  quite  indifferent;  he  subse- 
quently derived  great  advantage  from 
this  conquest,  in  mountainous  excur- 
sions and  geological  studies.  Anatomy 
was  also  of  double  value,  as  it  taught 
him  to  tolerate  the  most  repulsive 
sights  while  satisfying  his  thirst  for 
knowledge.  He  succeeded  so  well 
that  no  hideous  sight  could  disturb 


his  self-possession.  He  also  sought  to 
steel  himself  against  the  terrois  of 
imagination.  The  awful  and  shudder- 
ing impressions  of  darkness  in  church- 
yards, solitary  places,  churches  and 
chapels  by  night,  he  contrived  to 
render  indifferent — so  much  so,  that 
when  a  desire  came  over  him  to  recall 
in  such  scenes  the  pleasing  shudder  of 
youth,  he  could  scarcely  succeed  even 
by  th^.  strangest  and  most  terrific 
images."  The  Strasbourg  Cathedral, 
which  was  thus  turned  to  account  in 
fortifying  his  nerves  was  a  perpetual 
school  of  art  to  him  while  residing  in 
the  city.  It  was  the  inspiration  and 
centre  of  a  group  of  ideas,  the  repre- 
sentative to  him  of  the  entire  world  of 
Gothic  art. 

Valuable,  however,  as  may  have 
been  his  studies  at  Strasbourg,  there 
were  other  lessons  than  those  of  books 
and  architecture  which  he  was  learning. 
His  devotion  to  anatomy  and  physiolo- 
gy was  extended  to  the  intellect  and 
affections  in  their  living  representa- 
tions. It  would  doubtless  be  unfair 
to  charge  him  with  deliberately  engag- 
ing the  affections  of  the  young  ladies, 
with  whom  he  was  thrown  in  contact, 
for  the  purpose  of  a  scientific  experi- 
ment, a  vivisection  of  the  tenderest 
emotions  of  the  heart.  It  is  more  na- 
tural to  suppose  that  he  fell  in  love 
with  the  really  lovable  from  the  force 
of  sympathy,  passion  and  admiration ; 
but  we  must  still  be  impressed  with 
the  frequency  of  these  attachments,  and 
the  cool  superiority  which  he  maintain- 
ed  in  conducting  and  abandoning  them, 
taking  care  to  preserve,  for  available 
literary  purposes,  the  memory  of  all 
their  incidents  and  entanglements  The 


232 


JOHAOT   WOLFGANG   GOETHE. 


progress  of  these  early  love  affairs,  par- 
ticularly at  Strasbourg,  occupies  an  un- 
usually large  proportionate   space  in 
his  biography.     There  is  the  dramatic 
story  of  his  adventure  with  the  two 
daughters  of  his  dancing  master,  with 
one  of  whom  he  was  in  love,  while  the 
other  was  in  love  with  him,  a  game  of 
cross  proposes  ending  in  breaking  off 
the  connection  with  the  family  in  a 
highly  dramatic  style.  Another  intima- 
cy seemed  at  one  time  likely  to  lead  to 
more  important  results — the  acquaint- 
ance   with   a   certain    Frederika,   the 
daughter  of  the  clergyman  of  a  village 
in  the  vicinity  of  Strasbourg.     It  origi- 
nated in  a  kind  of  masquerading  frolic 
in  a  visit  to  the  family,  which  formed  it- 
self in  the  mind  of  Goethe,  as  the  coun- 
terpart of  that  described  by  Goldsmith 
in  the  Vicar  of  Wakefield — a  simple- 
minded  pastor,  two  daughters  and  even 
the  boy  Moses.   The  intercourse  which 
ensued  exhibited  some  very  pretty  am- 
atory scenes,  charming  in  themselves, 
delightful  in  a  painting  or  a  romance, 
furnishing  most  fascinating  pages  for 
future  books ;  but  by  no  means  to  be 
developed  in  the  sober  graces  of  matri- 
mony.  For  a  time  these  entanglements 
of  the  affections  had  a  strong  hold  up- 
on him,  if  we  may  judge  by  the  declar- 
ations of  his  correspondence  and  the 
sympathizing  utterances  of  his  friends. 
But  it  must  be  remembered  that  these 
things  were  occurring  in  a  singularly 
demonstrative  period,  when  it  appears 
to  have  been  the  habit  of  the  educated 
people  of  the  country  to  indulge  in  the 
greatest  freedom  and  openness  in  the 
expression  of  every  feeling  and  senti- 
ment of  the  heart,  whether  relating  to 
love  or  friendship.     Such  revelations 


were  characteristic  of  the  time  and  in 
fected  its  literature.  They  prevailed 
to  a  great  extent  in  France  and  Ger- 
many, but  they  have  always  been  alien 
to  the  English  mind  and  character.  The 
tendency  which  always  exists  where 
there  is  much  talking  about  a  thing  was 
to  excess  and  exaggeration.  Words 
soon  outrun  realities.  Sentiment  rap- 
idly grew  into  sentimentality.  It  is 
not,  perhaps,  after  all,  that  these  loves 
of  Goethe  are  so  very  much  more  re- 
markable than  the  common  flirtations 
of  other  ardent  young  philosophers,  as 
that  they  have  an  exceptional  inter- 
est in  his  case  from  the  freedom  with 
which  he  laid  them  bare  to  his  friends 
and  to  the  public  in  the  thin  disguise 
of  his  writings.  As  it  is,  we  may  study 
the  man  in  his  works  and  his  works  in 
the  man.  The  analytic  process  is  that 
of  the  critic ;  the  synthetic  is  that  of 
the  biographer. 

After  a  residence  in  Strasbourg  of 
something  more  than  a  year,  Goethe 
returned  home  with  the  degree  of  Doc- 
tor of  Laws,  not,  however,  to  settle 
down  to  the  practice  of  jurisprudence, 
but  to  throw  himself  with  greater  fervor 
upon  literary  composition.  His  study 
of  Shakespeare  had  impressed  him  with 
the  capabilities  of  the  drama  in  the  re- 
vival of  ancient  historical  incidents, 
while  the  spirit  of  the  past  had  been 
brought  vividly  to  his  mind  by  his  in- 
timate sympathy  with  the  medieval  as- 
sociations of  the  old  cathedral  city  in 
which  he  had  been  living.  A  third 
element  of  interest  was  combined  with 
these  in  the  subject  which  he  chose  for 
the  first  important  exercise  of  his  pow- 
ers. This  was  the  rough  daring  spirit 
of  independence,  fascinating  his  youth- 


JOHAKN  WOLFGANG  GOETHE. 


233 


£ul  energy  and  enthusiasm,  which  he 
found  in  the  career  of  Gottfried  von 
Berlichingen,  of  the  Iron  Hand,  as  he 
was  called,  a  lawless  feudal  German 
baron  of  the  Robin  Hood  or  Rob  Roy 
jrder,  of  the  sixteenth  century.  The 
story  of  the  exploits  of  this  warrior 
chieftain  Goethe  found  written  in  an 
old  chronicle  which  he  had  dramatized 
somewhat  after  the  fashion  of  Shakes- 
peare's historical  plays,  adding  several 
striking  characters  of  his  own  of  a  pure- 
ly romantic  or  melodramatic  interest. 
He  made  it  not  a  great  tragedy,  but  a 
grand  picturesque  bustling  narrative, 
bringing  past  events  with  startling 
effect  before  the  mind  of  the  modern 
spectator.  It  was  original  in  its  con- 
ception as  it  was  vivid  in  expression, 
and  with  all  its  imperfections,  it  be- 
came the  acknowledged  precursor  of 
two  great  divisions  of  our  recent  liter- 
ature, the  modern  historical  drama,  and 
the  historical  novel.  "  Gotz  von  Ber- 
lichingen" was  first  published  in  1773. 
Six  years  later  it  appeared  in  an  Eng- 
lish translation  from  the  pen  of  Walter 
Scott,  and  was  no  unimportant  means 
of  fastening  his  attention  upon  the 
themes  and  treatment  of  his  subsequent 
historical  poems  and  novels. 

The  next  memorable  work  of  Goethe, 
for  he  was  all  the  while  engaged  in  mi- 
nor literary  compositions,  in  occasional 
writings  and  contributions  to  the  aes- 
thetic journals  of  the  day,  was  also  to 
create  quite  as  extraordinary  an  impres- 
sion on  the  times.  This  was  the  famous 
"  Sorrows  of  Werther."  After  he  had 
written  "  Gotz,"  and  previously  to  its 
publication,  Goethe,  with  the  ostensi- 
ble purpose  of  pursuing  the  practice 
of  the  law,  resided  for  a  short  time  at 
30 


Wetzlar,  where,  as  usual,  he  gave  him- 
self up  unreservedly  to  literature,  so- 
ciety and  friendship.  Though,  from 
his  own  account,  he  had  hardly  di- 
gested his  inconsequential  passion  for 
Frederika,  he  was  readily  disposed, 
perhaps  the  more  on  that  account — to 
fill  up  the  gap  in  his  affections — to  fall 
into  a  new  attachment.  The  attractive 
object  was,  at  this  time,  no  other  than 
the  original  of  the  heroine,  in  his  tear- 
ful, sentimental  romance, — a  certain 
Charlotte  Buff,  a  joyous  maiden  of 
sixteen,  interesting  rather  than  beau- 
tiful, of  rare  modesty  and  worth,  and, 
happily,  of  a  high  degree  of  self-pos- 
session, for  she  was  already  betrothed 
to  Kestner,  a  friend  of  Goethe,  and, 
notwithstanding  the  excessive  admira- 
tion and  exquisite  attentions  of  the 
latter,  honorably  maintained  fidelity 
to  her  engagement.  Nor  did  this  per- 
severing gallantry  interfere  with  the 
friendship  between  the  husband  elect 
and  the  ardent  lover.  On  the  contrary, 
he  generously  looked  upon  him,  not 
with  the  jealousy  of  a  rival,  but  with 
the  sympathy  of  a  philosopher,  griev- 
ing that  he  should  be  distressed  in  so 
hopeless  a  way. 

This  was  the  very  magnanimity  of 
friendship,  and  proof  of  a  noble  nature; 
it  shows  too  that  Goethe's  conduct, 
allowing  him  the  limits  of  a  Platonic 
attachment,  was  not  dishonorable. 
Goethe  left  Wetzlar,  Charlotte  was  in 
due  time  married  to  Kestner,  and  the 
first  fruit  of  the  union,  in  compliment 
to  the  distinguished  inamorato,  was 
named  Wolfgang.  So  far,  the  story 
of  Werther,  like  that  of  his  fondness 
for  Frederika,  could  have  furnished  to 
the  poet  only  a  few  idyllic  scenes,  a» 


234 


JOHANN   WOLFGANG   GOETHE. 


other  sketch  for  his  books  of  graceful 
female  tenderness.  But  Wetzlar  was 
to  furnish  another  incident,  a  tragic 
catastrophe  to  be  inwoven  with  the 
plot.  There  was  in  the  town,  at  the 
same  time  with  Goethe,  a  certain  youth 
with  whom  he  became  acquainted, 
named  Jerusalem.  He  was  attached 
to  the  Brunswick  legation,  was  well 
educated,  of  a  philosophic  turn  of  in- 
tellect, and  of  a  melancholy  tempera- 
ment. He,  too,  formed  a  passionate 
attachment  to  the  wife  of  a  friend, 
was  mortified  by  being  refused  admis- 
sion to  the  house,  and  being  already 
in  a  diseased  state  of  mind,  committed 
suicide.  Combining  the  two  circum- 
stances, with  Jerusalem  for  the  unhap- 
py hero  and  Charlotte  for  the  subject 
of  his  passion,  Goethe,  blending  with 
the  two  a  certain  poetic  and  passionate 
melancholy  of  his  own  at  this  period, 
produced  the  "  Sorrows  of  "Werther." 

The  book  in  which  all  this  was  writ- 
ten— a  long  melancholy  wail  of  pro- 
found, yet  sickly  sentimentality,  re- 
lieved by  pictures  of  nature  and  idyl- 
lic scenes  of  the  natural  affections,  of 
simple,  human  everyday  life — seemed 
to  strike  at  once  the  heart  of  the 
world  in  giving  expression  to  the  deep 
discontent  which  was  beginning  to 
prevail  in  Europe,  and  which  found 
its  cure  at  last  in  the  blood-letting  at- 
tending the  French  Revolution  and  the 
subsequent  wars  of  Napoleon,  when 
there  was  something  more  practical  on 
hand  than  dyspeptic  sighing  and  la- 
mentation. For  the  time,  however,  its 
effect  was  transcendent.  .The  book  ran 
the  circuit  of  the  reading  world ;  its 
progeny  in  one  shape  or  other  would 
fill  a  library.  It  was  something  for  a 


young  man  of  twenty-three  tlus,  in 
the  production  of  "  Gotz  Yon  Berli 
chingen"  and  the  "Sorrows  of  Wer- 
ther," to  have  founded  two  great  schools 
of  popular  literature. 

There  were  several  other  literary  ef- 
forts of  Goethe  about  this  time  savor- 
ing of  honest  thought  and  experience 
— a  projected  drama  on  Mahomet,  a 
striking  conception  fully  planned,  but 
of  which  only  one  song  was  written 
out ;  a  satire  on  Wieland  for  his  mod- 
ern misrepresentation  of  the  heathen 
gods,  and  "  Clavigo,"  a  dramatic  version 
of  an  adventure  of  Beaumarchais,  writ- 
ten at  the  playful  command  of  another 
of  the  author's  Platonic  lady  loves,  the 
fascinating  Anna  Sybilla  Munch.  Still 
another  flame,  Anna  Elizabeth  Schone- 
mann,  celebrated  in  his  poetry  as 
"Lili,"  an  arrant  coquette,  furnished 
him  soon  after  with  emotional  experi- 
ence sufficient  for  an  opera,  "Erwin 
and  Elmira,"  in  which  he  took  his 
revenge  in  verse.  The  affair,  however, 
was  resumed,  and  a  marriage  seems  at 
one  time  to  have  been  determined  on, 
which  came  to  nothing  without  much 
difficulty.  There  was  another  play 
turning  on  the  passion  of  love, "  Stella,'' 
of  the  melodramatic  order,  the  English 
translation  of  which  suggested  to  Can- 
ning and  Frere  their  famous  parody, 
"  The  Rovers ;  or,  the  Double  Arrange- 
ment," in  the  An ti- Jacobin.  His  mental 
activity,  with  the  force  of  his  genius, 
which  impressed  itself  upon  whatever 
he  undertook,  had  now  gained  him  the 
respect  and  friendship  of  most  of  the 
eminent  literati  of  Germany.  He  num- 
bered among  his  friends  and  corres- 
pondents, Klopstock,  Herder,  Lavater, 
Jacobi,  and  others  of  distinction,  and  a 


JOHAKN"  WOLFGANG  GOETHE. 


235 


oreater   and  more  intimate  than  all, 

D  ' 

Schiller,  was  soon  to  be  added  to  the 
number.  His  talents,  moreover,  had 
gained  him  the  marked  attention  of 
Karl  August,  the  Duke  of  Saxe  Wei- 
mar, who  now  invited  him  to  pass  some 
time  at  his  court.  He  went,  towards  the 
close  of  1775,  and  the  capital  of  the  lit- 
tle duchy  became  his  home  for  life. 

Weimar  was  then  a  very  plain  little 
town,  as  yet  without  its  beautiful  park, 
its  city  walls  inclosing  under  six  or 
seven  hundred  roofs,  a  population  of 
about  seven  thousand.  The  manners 
of  the  court  were  formal  and  provin- 
cial. An  aristocratic  system  of  exclu- 
siveness  prevailed.  But  there  appears 
to  have  been,  judging  from  the  free 
rollicking  career  Goethe  led  there,  a 
great  deal  of  sportive  life  in  the  place. 
The  Dowager  Duchess  Amalia,  a  niece 
of  Frederick  the  Great,  was  of  a  happy 
temperament,  fond  of  pleasure,  well  in- 
structed in  various  accomplishments,  a 
patron  of  Wieland,  who  taught  her  to 
read  Aristophanes,  and  fond  of  having 
men  of  letters  in  her  company.  The 
Duchess  Luise  was  a  woman  of  deci- 
ded character,  and  her  husband,  the 
duke,  was  worthy  by  his  talents  and 
disposition  to  be  the  friend  and  com- 
panion of  Goethe.  They  were  both  in 
those  early  days  at  Weimar  young  to- 
gether, sympathized  heartily  with  each 
other  in  a  passion  for  nature  and  ad- 
venture, had  a  common  love  of  litera- 
ture, with  a  permitted  freedom  of  in- 
tercourse which  took  away  all  pretence 
of  patronage  on  the  one  side,  or  risk  of 
servility  on  the  other.  It  was  truly  "  a 
merry,  laughing,  quaffing  and  unthink- 
ing time  "  which  Goethe  passed  at  that 
period  with  this  versatile  Prince  Hal, 


in  frolics,  private  theatricals  and  social 
amusements,  not  unmixed  with  graver 
duties  of  the  petty  state  when  he  was 
appointed,  contrary  to  all  precedent, 
to  the  distinguished  post  at  the  court, 
of  Geheime  Legations  Hath,  with  a 
seat  in  the  privy  council  and  a  salary 
of  twelve  hundred  thalers.  The  duke 
also  soon  presented  him  with  an  at- 
tractive little  "  garden  house"  for  a 
residence,  within  the  precincts  of  the 
present  park,  where  the  poet  could 
enjoy  a  most  delightful  rural  seclusion 
in  the  immediate  vicinity  of  the  town. 
Here  he  studied,  wrote  and  indulged 
in  sentimental  reveries  over  a  new 
passion,  this  time  a  lady  of  three  and 
thirty,  the  mother  of  seven  children, 
the  accomplished  woman  of  the  world, 
who  knew  well  how  to  take  care  of 
herself  even  with  so  charming  an  ad- 
mirer,^— the  Frau  von  Stein  of  the 
court,  wife  of  the  Master  of  the 
Horse.  A  gallant  mutual  admiration 
and  exchange  of  sensibilities  was  kept 
up  between  them  for  ten  years. 

The  age  of  thirty  is  marked  by 
Goethe's  biographer,  Mr.  Lewes,  as  a 
turning  point  in  his  career,  the  period 
at  which  he  began  seriously  to  think  of 
life  as  something  to  be  rigidly  control- 
led and  regulated  for  the  most  perfect 
application  of  his  faculties  and  acquire- 
ments. The  previous  time  had  been  a 
period  of  turbulence  and  unrest^  of 
fluctuations  of  feeling  and  passion,  of 
experiment  in  the  trial  of  his  powers ; 
for  the  future  he  would  realize  the 
ideal,  in  the  full  and  mature  use  of  all 
h  is  powers.  The  fruits  of  his  candid  in- 
trospection and  noble  resolve  are  to  be 
seen  throughout  his  subsequent  life  and 
writings.  His  demeanor  becomes  more 


236 


JOHAOT  WOLFGANG  GOETHE. 


reserved ;  his  participation  in  the  fro- 
licsome vanities  of  the  day  is  gradually 
abandoned ;  we  no  longer  hear  of  him 
as  engaged  in  such  careless  personal 
exhibitions  of  himself  as  that  recorded 
by  his  biographer,  when  he  was  seen 
"standing  in  the  market-place  with 
the  duke  by  the  hour  together,  smack- 
ing huge  sledge  whips  for  a  wager." 
On  the  contrary,  his  influence  is  employ- 
ed in  restraining  the  wild  follies  of  that 
reckless  and  dissipated  noble  personage? 
and  in  guiding  to  a  greater  degree  his 
literary  and  philosophical  pursuits.  If 
Goethe  had  sometimes  heretofore  play- 
ed the  part  of  Falstaff  to  Prince  Hal, 
the  cast  was  now  reversed  and  Fal- 
staff  appeared,  as  he  doubtless  always 
had  been  in  reality,  the  leader  in  so- 
briety and  judgment.  But  it  is  in 
the  finish  and  completeness  of  his  lite- 
rary works  that  the  effect  of  this  pro- 
founder  consciousness  and  more  dili- 
gent application  is  to  be  seen.  The 
artist  henceforth  predominates,  sub- 
duing and  concentrating  in  classic 
forms  the  irregularities  of  passion  and 
emotion.  "The  Iphigenia  in  Tauris," 
produced  in  1779,  a  modern  transfu- 
sion of  an  ancient  dramatic  story,  is  a 
masterpiece  of  art,  profound  and  orig- 
inal in  conception. 

The  drama  of  "  Iphigenia  "  was  fol- 
lowed at  intervals  by  "Egmont,"  in 
which  we  are  introduced  to  some  of 
the  most  striking  scenes  in  the  war 
waged  by  the  Netherlands  against  the 
tyranny  of  Spain,  and  "  Torquato  Tas- 
so,"  a  dramatic  version  of  the  poet's 
life-histoTy  in  its  inner  consciousness. 
These  works  were  produced  in  a 
period  of  about  ten  years,  from  1778 
to  1 788  Within  that  time  the  poet 


had  been  elevated  to  the  nobility,  pur 
sued  various  scientific  studies  in  bota 
ny,  natural  philosophy,  anatomy,  seek 
ing  not  the^  mere  knowledge  of  facts, 
but  the  discovery  of   principles  and 
the  hidden  laws  of  organization,  and 
had  performed  a  memorable  tour  in 
Italy.     That  he  might  pursue  his  jour- 
ney with  the  greater  freedom  and  in- 
dependence, he  laid  aside  his  nobility 
for  the  tour  and  travelled  incognito 
with  the  assumed  name  of  Herr  Moller. 
Venice,  Rome,  Sicily,  engaged  most  of 
his  attention.     He  followed  up  his  lit- 
erary and  philosophical  studies  by  the 
way,  and  made  some  laborious  efforts 
to  accomplish  himself    as   a   painter, 
sufficient  to  satisfy  him  that  he  was 
not  born  for  the  art.     The  influence  of 
the  tour,  which  lasted  a  year  and  a 
half,  was  felt  in  his  subsequent  tastes 
and  culture.     An  experience  of  a  cam- 
paign or  two  in  France  a  year  or  two 
after  was  less  in  accordance  with  his 
disposition,  when  he  accompanied  his 
friend, the  duke,  in  the  expedition  across 
the  frontier  of  the  Duke  of  Brunswick, 
in  the  vain  attempt  of  the  allies  to 
stay  by  force  the  onward  movement  of 
the  Revolution.     We  hear  of  nothing 
more   remarkable    occurring    to   him 
during  this  adventure  than  the  expe- 
rience which  he  sought  of  the  sensa- 
tions of  a  soldier  under  fire  of  the  ene- 
my, an  experiment  to  ascertain  what 
sort  of  a  thing  the  "  cannon  fever,"  as 
it  was  called,  might  be,  and  of  which 
he  wrote  a  vivid  description. 

On  his  return  from  Italy,  Goethe 
had  been  absolved  by  the  duke  from 
the  discharge  of  his  active  duties  about 
the  court  as  President  of  the  Chamber 
and  Director  of  the  War  Department, 


JOHANN  WOLFGANG   GOETHE. 


237 


while  lie  still  retained  the  privilege  of 
a  seat  in  the  council  and  the  superin- 
tendence of  all  scientific  and  artistic 
institutions,  including  the  theatre.  As 
his  salary  had  been  increased  and  he 
was  in  receipt  of  a  handsome  addi- 
tional income  after  the  death  of  his 
father,  which  occurred  in  1781,  to  say 
nothing  of  the  proceeds  of  his  writ- 
ings, his  pecuniary  circumstances  were 
in  the  most  favorable  condition.  In 
fact,  he  was  in  a  perfectly  independent 
position  to  pursue,  with  the  greatest 
advantages,  the  system  of  intellectual 
culture  upon  which  he  had  set  his 
heart.  The  small  rustic  "garden- 
house,"  in  which  he  had  for  some  time 
resided,  had  been  succeeded  by  a  resi- 
dence in  the  town,  granted  him  by  the 
duke,  which  was  rebuilt  for  him  during 
his  absence  in  the  French  campaign. 
This  house  became  thoroughly  identi- 
fied with  the  man,  being  gradually 
furnished  and  adapted  according  to 
his  tastes  and  inclinations.  He  lived 
in  it  for  the  remainder  of  his  life,  and 
after  his  death,  like  the  Abbotsford  of 
Sir  Walter  Scott,  it  was  regarded  as  a 
kind  of  living  monument  to  the  man. 
To  complete  the  picture  of  the 
poet's  home,  it  is  necessary  to  refer  to 
an  important  member  of  his  family, 
the  lady  whom  he  had  taken  to  his 
house  as  his  acknowledged  mistress, 
who  became  the  mother  of  his  children, 
and,  after  eighteen  years  passed  in  this 
irregular  relation,  was  made  his  wife 
by  marriage.  This  was  Christiane 
Vulpius,  with  whom  he  became  ac- 
quainted in  a  noticeable  manner.  As 
he  was  walking,  one  day,  in  the  au- 
tumn of  1788,  in  the  park  at  Weimar, 
a  petition  was  presented  to  him  by 


Christiane,  "  a  fresh,  young,  bright- 
looking  girl,"  asking  his  influence  in 
procuring  a  post  for  her  brother,  the 
author  of  the  celebrated  romance, 
"Binaldo  Binaldini."  This  was  fol- 
lowed by  the  attachment  which  re- 
sulted, a  year  after,  on  her  bearing  him 
a  son,  in  her  formal  introduction  to 
his  house,  to  the  scandal,  as  may  be 
supposed,  of  good  society  at  Weimar. 
There  is  but  little  to  be  said  by  the 
greatest  admirers  of  Goethe  in  apology 
for  this  flagrant  violation  of  morality. 
His  biographer,  Mr.  Lewes,  speaks  of 
his  "abstract  dread  of  marriage," 
which,  in  the  discussion  of  such  a 
question,  sounds  very  much  like  a  jest, 
and  of  the  disparity  in  social  station, 
which  can  hardly  be  considered  of 
much  greater  consequence  with  a  man 
so  accustomed  and  privileged  to  act 
independently.  There  are  two  pic- 
tures presented  to  us,  of  her  youth, 
when  Goethe  wrote  poems  in  celebra- 
tion of  her  charms,  and  of  her  woman- 
hood when  her  beauty  was  spoiled  by 
intemperance.  Of  the  first  it  is  writ- 
ten, "  her  golden-brown  locks,  laughing 
eyes,  ruddy  cheeks,  kiss-provoking 
lips,  small  and  gracefully  rounded 
figure,  gave  her  '  the  appearance  of  a 
young  Dionysos ! '  Her  naivete,  gayety 
and  enjoying  temperament  completely 
fascinated  Goethe,  who  recognized  in 
her  one  of  those  free,  healthy  speci 
mens  of  nature  which  education  had 
not  distorted  with  artifice.  She  was 
like  a  child  of  the  sensuous  Italy  he 
had  just  quitted  with  so  much  regret ; 
and  there  are  few  poems  in  any  lan- 
guage which  approach  the  passionate 
gratitude  of  those  in  which  he  recalls 
the  happiness  sh'j  gave  him."  In  the 


238 


JOHANN  WOLFGANG  GOETHE. 


account  of  her  some  fifteen  years  later 
we  read,  "  Years  and  self-indulgence 
have  now  made  havoc  with  her  charms. 
The  evil  tendency,  which  youth  and 
animal  spirits  kept  within  excess,  has 
asserted  itself  with  a  distinctness 
v^hich  her  birth  and  circumstances 
may  explain,  if  not  excuse,  but  which 
can  only  be  contemplated  in  sadness. 
Her  father,  we  know,  ruined  himself 
by  intemperance  ;  her  brother  impair- 
ed fine  talents  by  similar  excess ;  and 
Christiane,  who  inherited  the  fatal 
disposition,  was  not  saved  from  it  by 
the  checks  which  refined  society  im- 
poses, for  she  was  shut  out  from  socie- 
ty by  her  relation  to  Goethe.  Fond  of 
gayety,  and  especially  of  dancing,  she 
was  often  seen  at  the  students'  balls 
at  Jena;  and  she  accustomed  herself 
to  an  indulgence  in  wine,  which  rap- 
idly destroyed  her  beauty,  and  which 
was  sometimes  the  cause1  of  serious 
domestic  troubles."  It  was  in  this 
later  period,  at  an  odd  time,  five  days 
after  the  battle  of  Jena,  when  all  Wei- 
mar was  in  confusion  and  the  French 
with  Napoleon  were  in  possession  of 
the  town,  that  the  marriage  took  place. 
The  union,  ten  years  after,  in  1816, 
was  terminated  by  the  death  of  the 
wife. 

Succeeding  Goethe's  more  important 
dramatic  productions,  came  his  art 
novel,  gathering  up  many  years  of 
thought  and  experience,  "  Wilhelm 
Meister's  Apprenticeship  and  Travels." 
The  motive  of  this  work,  which  grew 
out  of  the  author's  active  engagement 
in  the  superintendence  of  the  court 
theatie  at  Weimar,  was  a  representa- 
tion of  the  dramatic  life,  in  its  trials 
and  capabilities :  as  it  was  continued 


it  assumed  a  symbolical  cast  and  was 
less  an  exhibition  of  the  actual  world. 
Having  been  translated  by  Carlyle,  it 
is  one  of  the  best  known  to  English 
readers  of  the  author's  works. 

In  "  Herrmann  and  Dorothea,"  which 
appeared  in  1797,  Goethe  gave  to  the 
world  one  of  the  most  perfect  and 
thoroughly  satisfactory  of  all  his  works. 
It  is  a  series  of  idyllic  pictures,  a  tale 
of  love  and  affection,  set  in  the  frame- 
work of  German  village  life,  enriched 
by  humor  and  sentiment,  with  the 
back-ground  of  the  French  revolution. 
The  poem,  tripping  lightly  on  with 
the  ease  and  strength  of  the  hexame- 
ter in  the  hands  of  a  master,  is  at  once 
simple,  quaint,  picturesque  and  pro- 
found in  feeling,  and  truthful  in  ex- 
pression. Art  and  nature  were  never 
united  in  a  happier  composition. 

The  first  part  of  the  tragedy  of 
"  Faust,"  the  consummate  fruit  of  the 
genius  of  the  author  in  his  various  at- 
tainments, was  given  to  the  world  in 
1806.  It  was  the  patient  growth  oi 
thirty  years  of  intellectual  labor  and 
passionate  experience.  Traces  of  all 
his  previous  life-history  appeared  in  it. 
The  history  of  its  composition  is  thus 
given  by  his  biographer.  "  The  Faust 
fable  was  familiar  to  Goethe  as  a  child. 
In  Strasbourg,  during  1770-71,  he  con- 
ceived the  idea  of  fusing  his  persona] 
experience  into  the  mould  of  the  old 
legend ;  but  he  wrote  nothing  of  the 
work  until  1774-75,  when  the  ballad 
of  the  King  of  Thule,  the  first  mono- 
logue and  the  first  scene  with  Wagner, 
were  written ;  and  during  his  love 
affair  with  Lili,  he  sketched  Gretchen's 
catastrophe,  the  scene  in  the  street,  the 
Gretchen's  bed-room,  the 


scene    in 


JOHANN  WOLFGANG  GOETHE. 


scenes  between  Faust  and  Mephisto- 
pheles  during  the  walk,  and  in  the 
street,  and  the  garden  scene.  In  his 
Swiss  journey,  he  sketched  the  first 
interview  with  Mephistopheles  and 
the  compact ;  also  the  scene  before 
the  city  gates,  the  plan  of  Helena,  the 
scene  between  the  student  and  Mephis- 
topheles, and  Auerbach's  cellar.  When 
in  Italy,  he  read  over  the  old  manu- 
script, and  wrote  the  scenes  of  the 
witches'  kitchen  and  the  cathedral ; 
also  the  monologue  in  the  forest.  In 
1797,  the  whole  was  remodelled. 
Then  were  added  the  two  prologues, 
theWalpurgis  night,and  the  dedication. 
In  1801  he  completed  it  as  it  now 
stands,  retouching  it,  perhaps,  when  it 
was  published."  A  second  part  of 
Faust,  symbolical,  mystical  and  ob- 
scure, was  the  latest  literary  work  of 
the  author's  closing  years.  Both  por- 
tions, but  more  particularly  the  latter, 
have  furnished  inexhaustible  materials 
for  critics  and  commentators.  The 
main  work  is  sufficiently  simple  in  its 
general  design,  setting  forth  with  all 
the  force  of  poetry  and  imagination 


the  failure  of  the  human  mind  in  its 
pursuit  of  knowledge  to  satisfy  the 
demands  of  the  soul,  and  the  triumph 
of  sensuality  over  the  distracted  powers 
of  life.  The  whole  work  has  recently  ap- 
peared in  English  in  a  justly  admired 
translation  from  the  pen  of  Bayard 
Taylor. 

In  1825,  the  fiftieth  anniversary  of 
Goethe's  arrival  at  the  court  was  cele- 
brated at  Weimar  with  imposing  cere- 
monial and  the  most  fervent  personal 
attentions.  Less  than  three  years  af- 
ter, his  old  friend,  the  duke,  was  taken 
away,  to  be  followed  shortly  by  his 
wife,  the  grand  duchess.  Goethe  bore 
himself  through  these  trials  with  equa- 
nimity, according  to  his  habit,  and 
though  suffering  from  the  effects  of 
age,  was  still  employed  in  his  literary 
labors.  His  last  work  was  the  com- 
pletion of  Faust,  already  mentioned, 
in  his  eighty-second  year.  In  the 
spring  of  1832  he  was  taken  ill  with 
a  cold,  bringing  on  a  nervous  fever 
which,  within  a  week,  on  the  22d  ol 
March,  resulted  in  his  death.  His  la«f 
audible  words  were  "  More  light." 


JOHN    PHILIP    KEMBLE. 


HHHE  records  of  the  Kemble  family 
-J-  are  the  most  brilliant  in  the  an- 
nals of  the  British  stage.  There  was 
a  shadowy  claim  or  tradition  among 
them  of  a  member  of  the  race,  a  Kem- 
ble, who,  in  the  great  civil  war,  fought 
on  the  royal  side  at  Worcester ;  and  of 
another,  a  Roman  Catholic  priest,  who 
innocently  suffered  death  at  Hereford, 
a  martyr  to  the  fears  of  England  in 
the  panic  consequent  on  that  dar- 
ing imposition  on  religious  credulity, 
known  as  the  Titus  Gates  plot. 
^Before  he  went  to  the  scaffold,  it  is 
said,  he  called  for  a  pipe  of  tobacco, 
and  smoked  it,  which  was  commemo- 
rated in  the  region  where  he  suffered, 
by  a  last  pipe  being  called  "  Kemble's 
pipe."  Henry  Siddons  claimed  that 
the  name  Kemble  and  Campbell  were 
originally  the  same,  which  opened  an 
early  and  distinguished  Scottish  ances- 
try ;  but  as  this  was  in  a  conversation 
with  the  author  of  "  The  Pleasures  of 
Hope,"  it  may  only  have  been  thrown 
out  in  a  spirit  of  mutual  compliment. 
The  known  dramatic  ancestry  in  the 
long  lineage  of  players  of  the  tribe, 
carries  us  back  in  the  early  days  of  the 
eighteenth  century  to  a  person  named 

(240) 


Ward,  an  actor  of  some  reputation,  a 
contemporary  of  Betterton,  who,  in 
1723,  took  a  leading  part  on  the  London 
boards  in  the  production  of  the  amia- 
ble poet  Fen  ton's  "Mariamne."  He 
subsequently  became  a  strolling  man- 
ager, his  daughter,  Sarah,  acting  with 
him  before  the  country  audiences.  In  the 
course  of  this  random  life,  she  fell  in 
love  with,  and  married — it  was  a  run- 
away match,  without  the  consent  of 
her  parents — Roger  Kemble,  a  subor- 
dinate member  of  the  company,  a  man 
of  some  education,  with  a  gentle  dispo- 
sition, of  fine  personal  appearance,  an- 
swering to  her  own  beauty,  of  the  us- 
ual poverty  of  his  profession,  and  a 
Roman  Catholic.  Her  father  was  re 
luctantly  reconciled  to  the  marriage, 
humorously  expressing  his  forgiveness 
in  a  jest,  at  the  expense  of  the  bride- 
groom— "  Sarah,  you  have  not  disobey- 
ed me.  I  told  you  never  to  marry 
an  actor,  and  you  have  married  a  man 
who  neither  is,  nor  ever  can  be  an  ac- 
tor." Notwithstanding  this  facetious 
anathema,  Roger  Kemble  seems  in  his 
way  to  have  played  well  his  part,  and 
when,  at  the  age  of  seventy,  brought 
into  notice  by  his  illustrious  child  rr  n, 


From  a  painting  by  Sir  '1'hatn.as  Lawrence. 
Jolmson,1vVilsonA:Co.,PabliHlier8,N'ewYork 


JOHN   PHILIP  KEMBLE. 


243 


quired  the  men  to  attend  the  entrance 
of  his  hero  into  Rome.  At  York,  Kern- 
ble  also  gave  recitations  from  the  po- 
ets, Mason,  Gray,  and  Collins,  and  the 
pathetic  tales  of  Sterne.  He  deliver- 
ed with  much  effect  at  Edinburgh,  a 
lecture  written  by  himself  on  sacred 
and  profane  oratory.  A  less  happy 
undertaking  at  this  time,  was  a  whim- 
sical alteration  of  Shakespeare's  Come- 
dy of  Errors,  which  he  entitled,  "  Oh ! 
It's  Impossible,"  his  notion  being  still 
further  to  confound  the  Dromios  in  the 
eyes  of  the  spectators  by  making  them 
black  servants.  Fortunately,  this  com- 
position never  was  printed.  After 
further  distinguishing  himself  at  York 
in  Hamlet  and  other  characters,  he 
closed  his  engagement  with  Wilkinson 
in  the  summer  of  1781,  with  the  part 
of  Jaffier,  in  Venice  Preserved. 

At  this  time,  Richard  Daly,  a  bust- 
ling Irish  actor  of  good  education  and 
of  success  on  the  stage,  was  about  en- 
gaging in  his  undertaking,  which  soon 
became  quite  famous,  of  the  revival 
and  management  of  the  Smock  Alley 
Theatre,  as  it  was  called  in  Dublin. 
On  the  look  out  for  ability,  he  lighted 
upon  K enable  at  York,  perceived  his 
merits  and  secured  his  services  for  his 
new  enterprise.  His  salary  was  fixed 
at  five  pounds  a  week,  which  was  then 
considered  a  handsome  remuneration. 
Shortly  after  the  opening  of  the  the- 
atre he  appeared  in  Hamlet,  which  had 
already  become  one  of  his  best  accred- 
ited parts.  He  also  played  Alexander 
the  Great  in  Lee's  drama,  and  made  a 
decided  hit  with  his  audience  in  his 
performance  of  Captain  Jephson's 
Count  of  Nai  bonne,  a  tragedy  based 
on  Horace  Walpole's  Castle  of  Otran- 


to.  Jephson  was  a  wit  and  humorist, 
with  a  military  prestige,  reputation 
as  a  brilliant  speaker  in  the  English 
parliament,  and  of  recognized  ability 
in  literature;  he  was  withal  a  great 
social  favorite  in  Dublin,  so  that  Kem 
ble's  graceful  and  animated  perform- 
ance in  his  play  was  doubly  appreci- 
ated. Jephson  took  him  by  the  hand 
and  at  his  hospitable  mansion,  Blacls 
Rock,  introduced  him  to  the  best  com- 
pany of  the  capital.  This  advantage 
of  moving  in  good  society,  for  which 
his  manners,  disposition  and  education 
eminently  fitted  him,  attended  Kemble 
wherever  he  went.  Among  other  parts 
in  Ireland,  during  his  two  years'  so- 
journ there  at  this  time,  he  played 
Othello,  Macbeth  and  Juba  in  Addi- 
son's  tragedy  to  the  Cato  of  Digges, 
"  the  gentleman  actor,"  as  he  was  call- 
ed. In  his  last  season  in  Dublin,  in 
the  summer  of  1783,  Kemble  was  join- 
ed in  Daly's  company  by  his  more  il- 
lustrious sister,  Mrs.  Siddons.  The 
extraordinary  reputation  which  she 
had  acquired  on  the  London  stage 
drew  attention  to  other  members  of 
the  family ;  the  name  of  Kemble  wa& 
becoming  known,  .and  the  following 
season  John  Philip  and  his  brother 
Stephen  were  both  engaged  for  the 
metropolis. 

Stephen  Kemble,  the  third  child  of 
the  family,  born  the  year  after  John, 
in  1758,  was  intended  by  his  father 
for  the  medical  profession,  but,  like 
Dick  the  apothecary  in  the  farce,  soon 
abandoned  the  pestle  and  mortar  foi 
the  stage.  After  serving  the  usual  ap  , 
prenticeship  in  strolling  companies, 
following  his  brother,  he  had  found 
his  way  to  a  small  theatre  in  Dublin 


244 


JOHN   PHILIP   KEMBLE. 


where  he  made  a  first  appearance  in 
Shylock.  While  the  managers  of 
Drury  Lane  were  negotiating  with 
John  Philip,  Harris,  the  manager  of 
the  rival  Covent  Garden,  secured  Ste- 
phen, mistaking  him,  it  is  said,  for 
the  great  Kemble,"  in  which,  if  avoir- 
dupois had  been  a  substitute  in  the 
scales  for  talent,  he  would  have  been 
perfectly  right.  In  this  capacity,  with 
much  preliminary  puffing,  he  was 
brought  out  a  week  in  advance  of  his 
brother  in  the  part  of  Othello,  which 
he  acted  with  some  ability,  though  the 
critics  were  not  long  in  discovering  the 
difference  between  physical  and  mental 
greatness.  No  force  of  managerial  pre- 
tension could  maintain  him  in  tragedy 
in  the  presence  of  Mrs.  Siddons  and 
John  Kemble ;  but  he  appears  to  have 
held  his  own  in  comedy  at  the  Hay- 
market,  where  he  played  Sir  Christo- 
pher Curry  in  George  Colman's  "In- 
kle and  Yarico."  He  subsequently 
became  manager  at  Edinburgh  and  at 
N"ewcastle-upon-Tyne ;  appearing  oc- 
casionally in  London,  where  he  had  the 
distinction  among  the  Falstaffs  of  the 
stage  of  playing  the  part  without  stuf- 
fing. He  died  near  Durham,  in  1822, 
and  was  buried  in  the  cathedral  of 
that  city.  He  bore  an  amiable  char- 
acter. The  poet  Campbell,  who  had 
met  him  in  his  youth,  when  the  actor 
touched  a  tender  chord  in  quoting  some 
of  the  poet's  early  verses,  speaks  of 
him  with  affection.  "  I  have  seen  him," 
he  writes,  "  often  act  in  Edinburgh  in 
my  boyish  days,  and,  if  it  was  the  pre- 
possession of  youth  and  strong  per- 
sonal friendship  to  believe  him  an  un- 
paralleled comedian,  I  would  go  a 
igreat  way  to  enjoy  the  same  illusion 


again.  Joy  comes  to  my  heart  at  the 
recollection  of  his  Falstaff  and  Village 
Lawyer ;  and  the  memory  of  the  man, 
who  was  pleasantness  personified, 
touches  me  with  still  deeper  feelings." 
John  Philip  Kemble  made  his  first 
appearance  in  London  at  Drury  Lane 
Theatre,  September  30th,  1783,  in  the 
character  of  Hamlet.  It  is  noticeable 
in  the  accounts  of  this  performance,  of 
which  there  are  several  interesting  con- 
temporary records,  that  though  the 
actor  had  arrived  only  at  the  age  of 
twenty-six,  he  had  already  acquired  the 
leading  characteristics  which  marked 
his  later  and  maturer  powers.  His 
acting  was  even  then  the  reflection  of 
an  educated  mind,  and  of  a  strong  vig- 
orous nature.  All  genuine  art,  of  what- 
ever kind,  whether  in  literature,  paint- 
ing, sculpture,  oratory,  is  but  a  trans- 
lation of  the  man — the  man  with  his 
peculiar  disposition,  talents  and  ac- 
quirements in  action,  a  representation 
of  his  moral  and  intellectual  capacity. 
Garrick,  with  lively  French  blood 
running  in  his  veins,  compact,  graceful 
in  person,  nimble  and  forgetive  in  in- 
tellect, versatile  in  his  powers,  quick 
in  appreciation,  rapid  in  execution,  il- 
lustrated on  the  stage  the  variety  and 
prodigality  of  nature.  Kemble,  of  a 
loftier  build,  dignified,  yet  graceful, 
slow  and  measured,  arriving  at  results 
rather  by  study  than  intuition,  was  to 
exhibit,  spite  of  defect  of  utterance,  the 
perfection  of  declamation  and  statu- 
esque power  in  what  may  be  called 
the  heroic  style  of  acting.  The  critics 
on  his  first  London  performance  ad- 
mired  and  yet  were  somewhat  "  put 
out"  by  his  course.  It  had  the  ad 
vantage  and  the  disadvantage  of  being 


JOHN  PHILIP   KEMBLE. 


245 


original,  and  in  the  end,  as  is  usual, 
the  originality  triumphed.  His  "  new 
readings"  were  commented  upon  and 
discussed;  he  was  pronounced  "too 
scrupulously  graceful."  If  the  pres- 
tige of  the  success  of  his  great  sister, 
who  had  preceded  him  by  a  year  in 
London,  had  not  been  in  his  favor,  he 
might  still  have  had  a  hard  struggle 
for  fame.  As  it  was,  the  star  of  the 
Kembles  was  already  in  the  ascendant, 
though  it  had  not  yet  risen  to  its  height 
in  the  theatrical  firmament. 

Kemble  repeated  Hamlet  five  times 
within  the  month.  His  next  Shake- 
spearian part  was  Richard  III.,  early 
in  November,  followed  by  Sir  Giles 
Overreach ;  but  he  was  generally  kept 
to  inferior  characters,  and,  at  this  pe- 
riod of  his  career,  had  seldom  the  op- 
portunity of  appearing  with  his  sister, 
Mrs.  Siddons,  who  was  then  perform- 
ing at  Drury  Lane.  Like  every  actor 
who  has  attained  distinction  in  London, 
he  found,  at  the  start,  the  stage  occu- 
pied by  some  claimant  who,  by  merit 
or  custom,  had  acquired  a  species  of 
prescriptive  right  to  most  of  the  lead- 
ing parts.  A  kind  of  conservatism,  in 
consonance  with  the  genius  of  the 
British  institutions,  long  prevailed  in 
the  management  of  the  theatres.  The 
new  actor,  whatever  his  merit,  required 
both  effort  and  patience  before  he 
could  displace  the  old.  Kemble  on 
his  arrival  found  Henderson  and 
William  Smith  in  possession  of  the 
leading  tragic  characters;  the  former 
of  the  natural  and  impulsive  school  of 
Garrick,  capable  of  genuine  passion 
though  laboring  under  defect  of  per- 
son ;  the  latter,  "  Smith  the  genteel, 
the  airy,  and  the  smart,"  as  he  is  de- 


scribed in  the  verse  of  Churchill,  of  an 
easy  commanding  figure,  accepted  in 
Richard,  Macbeth  and  other  tragic  per 
sonations,  but  far  better  qualified  for 
the  comedy  of  Farquhar  and  other  po 
lite  witty  plays,  in  which,  in  Archer, 
Captain  Plume  and  the  like,  he  had 
gained  his  title,  "  Gentleman  Smith." 
He  had  been  long  upon  the  London 
stage,  now  for  thirty  years,  having 
commenced  his  career  there  immedi- 
ately on  his  expulsion  from  Cambridge 
University,  from  which  he  had  been 
driven  by  some  youthful  irregularities. 
Garrick  had  brought  him  from  Co  vent 
Garden  to  Drury  Lane,  where  he  was  at 
this  time  firmly  established  in  public 
favor.  When  Mrs.  Siddons  performed  in 
Lady  Macbeth,  Isabella  in  Measure  for 
Measure,  it  was  Smith  and  not  Kemble 
who  was  called  upon  for  Macbeth  and 
the  Duke.  There  was  one  character, 
however,  which  Kemble  enjoyed  from 
the  beginning,  Beverley,  in  the  "  Game- 
ster," in  which  Mrs.  Siddons,  as  the 
wife,  sustained  one  of  her  most  im- 
passioned parts.  He  had  also  the  op- 
portunity, by  royal  command,  of  acting 
King  John  with  his  sister's  Constance. 
In  due  time  the  value  of  their  joint 
performances  was  fully  recognized. 
Meantime,  Kemble  was  perfecting  him- 
self by  study  and  discipline.  Among 
other  performances,  he  was  greatly  ad- 
mired in  a  masque,  entitled  "Arthur 
and  Emmeline,"  an  alteration  of  1  )ry- 
den's  "King  Arthur."  He  acted  in 
this  with  Miss  Farren.  There  is  a 
beautiful  small  engraving  by  Heath, 
after  a  drawing  by  Stothard,  of  a  pa- 
thetic scene  in  this  play,  where  they  are 
introduced  together,  with  an  air  of 
equal  gallantry  and  refinement. 


246 


JOHN   PHILIP  KEMBLE. 


ID  the  spring  of  1785,  Kemble  acted 
Othello,  with  Mrs.  Siddons  as  Desde- 
oiona.  His  dress  was  the  uniform  of 
a  British  general  officer ;  his  perform- 
ance seems  to  have  been  marked  by 
dignity  rather  than  emotion,  even  the 
celebrated  pathetic  farewell  to  his  oc- 
cupation, "  coming  rather  coldly  from 
him."  Subsequently,  a  year  or  two 
after,  he  made  a  decided  impression  in 
Lear,  Mrs.  Siddons  playing  Cordelia. 
Boaden  says  he  never  again  achieved 
the  excellence  of  that  first  perform- 
ance of  the  part ;  "  subsequently,  he 
was  too  elaborately  aged,  and  quenched 
with  infirmity  the  insane  fire  of  the 
injured  father.  The  curse,  as  he  then 
uttered  it,  harrowed  up  the  soul :  the 
gathering  himself  together,  with  the 
hands  convulsively  clasped,  the  in- 
creasing fervor  and  rapidity,  and  the 
suffocation  of  the  conclusive  words,  all 
evinced  consummate  skill  and  original 
invention.  The  countenance,  too,  was 
finely  made  up  and  in  grandeur  ap- 
proached the  most  awful  impersonation 
of  Michael  Angelo." 

We  have  seen  the  younger  brother 
Stephen  on  a  London  stage ;  about  the 
time  of  John  Kemble's  first  appearance, 
there  were  also  two  other  members  of 
the  family,  besides  Mrs.  Siddons,  act- 
ing in  the  metropolis,  Frances  the 
fourth,  and  Elizabeth,  the  fifth  child, 
respectively  at  the  ages  of  twenty-four 
and  twenty-six.  Like  the  other  Kern- 
bles,  they  were  distinguished  for  their 
beauty,  and  were  not  unsuccessful  on 
the  stage.  Frances  was  married  in 
1786,  to  Francis  Twiss,  brother  to 
the  better  known  traveller  of  the  name 
and  compiler  of  an  Index  to  Shakes- 
peare, "  a  most  respectable  man,  though 


of  but  small  fortune,  and  I  thank  God 
that  she  is  off  the  stage,"  wrote  Mrs. 
Siddons  to  her  friend,  Dr.  Whalley, 
shortly  after  the  event.  Kemble  acted 
with  Elizabeth  in  Shirley's  "  Edward 
the  Black  Prince,"  in  his  first  season  at 
Drury  Lane.  She  remained  in  the 
stock  company,  performing  inferior 
parts  till  her  marriage  with  Charles 
Edward  Whitelock,  god-son  of  the 
Pretender,  who  had  given  him  hia 
name,  the  manager  of  the  theatre  at 
Newcastle-upon-Tyne.  She  came  with 
her  husband  to  America  in  1794,  and 
remained  in  the  country  several  years, 
playing  at  Philadelphia,  where  she 
moved  the  great  Washington  to  tears, 
at  Charleston,  New  York  and  Boston. 
Returning  to  London,  she  revisited 
America  in  1802  and  again  in  1812. 
Her  latter  days  were  passed  in  retire- 
ment in  England,  where  she  died  in 
1835,  at  the  age  of  seventy-four. 

Mr.  Kemble,  at  the  age  of  thirty, 
made  up  his  mind  to  matrimony.  He 
had  on  one  or  two  occasions,  it  is  said, 
been  peculiarly  impressed  with  female 
charms  in  his  stage  career.  There  wag 
a  report  of  something  more  than  ten- 
derness in  his  regard  for  the  amiable 
and  romantic  Mrs.  Inchbald,  a  creature 
formed  for  the  tender  passion ;  and 
much  was  also  said  of  his  admiration 
of  the  beautiful  Miss  Phillips,  as  she 
appeared  at  the  same  time  with  him 
in  Dublin,  the  delightful  singer  snb 
sequently  known  as  Mrs.  Crouch,  of 
whom  a  great  deal  is  to  be  read  in  the 
"  Reminiscences  "  of  her  friend  and  com- 
panion, Michael  Kelly.  There  was  also 
a  rumor  in  circulation  of  a  strong  pas- 
sion entertained  for  him  by  the  daugh 
ter  of  a  noble  earl,  which  he  was  tou 


JOHN  PHILIP  KEMBLE. 


247 


orach  of  a  gentleman  to  take  any  ad- 
Vantage  of.  Whatever  wounds  he  may 
have  received  from  or  inflicted  on  these 
attractive  personages,  his  choice  at  last 
fell  upon  a  young  widow,  Mrs.  Brereton, 
an  actress  at  Drury  Lane,  of  a  stage 
family,  her  mother  being  a  clever  per- 
former in  old  ladies'  characters,  and 
her  father  for  several  years  discharg- 
ing the  useful  office  of  prompter  at  the 
theatre.  As  Miss  Priscilla  Hopkins,  to 
distinguish  her  from  an  elder  sister,  to 
whose  parts  on  her  marriage  with  a 
gentleman  of  fortune  she  had  succeed- 
ed, she  had  become  known  as  a  pleas 
ing  actress  of  such  characters  as  Peggy 
in  the  <;  Country  Wife,"  Selima  in 
"  Tamerlane,"  Aura  in  the  "  Country 
Lasses."  She  had  then  married  Brere- 
ton, a  young  actor  who  had  been  in- 
structed by  Garrick,  begun  his  career 
in  London  at  seventeen  in  the  part  of 
Douglas,  and  been  brought  into  prom- 
inent notice  as  Jaffier,  when  Mrs.  Sid- 
dons  played  Belvidera.  He  was  taken 
ill  with  some  afflictive  malady  accom- 
panied by  loss  of  reason,  and  after  a 
year  in  this  condition,  died  in  Febru- 
ary, 1787.  Kemble  had  noticed  the 
quiet  virtue  of  the  wife  under  these 
unhappy  circumstances,  admired  her 
disposition,  and  before  the  year  was 
out,  proposed  to  her.  They  were  mar- 
ried early  in  December,  and  a  few  eve- 
nings after  the  ceremony,  appeared  to- 
gether in  Sir  Giles  Overreach  and  Mar- 
garet, in  Massinger's  tragedy. 

In  1788,  Mr.  Kemble,  on  King's  retire- 
ment, became  manager  of  Drury  Lane, 
and  was,  of  course,  free  to  choose  his 
characters  and  regulate  his  own  ap- 
pearances. Nor  had  he  any  prominent 
rival  at  this  time  to  encounter.  Hen- 


derson, still  in  his  youthful  prime,  died 
a  few  years  before,  at  the  age  of  thirty 
nine,  and  was  buried  in  Westminister 
Abbey ;  and  the  veteran  Smith  having 
married  a  fortune,  had  just  closed  his 
long  career  on  the  stage,  taking  leave 
of  the  public  in  his  original  part  of 
Charles  Surface.  Macbeth  was  now 
brought  on  the  stage  with  increased 
effect,  Kemble,  of  course,  acting  with 
Mrs.  Siddons.  To  this,  among  other 
leading  personations,  succeeded  his 
Lear  in  Massinger's  "  Rule  a  Wife  and 
Have  a  Wife."  Henry  VIII.  was  pro- 
duced with  great  brilliancy,  with  Mrs. 
Siddons  as  Queen  Catharine,  Kemble 
gracefully  retaining  Bensley  in  his  es- 
tablished character  of  Wolsey,  and  aid- 
ing his  sister  in  the  subordinate  Crom- 
well and  Griffith.  Henry  V.  was  also 
revived  after  a  stage  neglect  of  twenty 
years,  Kemble  playing  the  King.  This 
was  followed  \>y  the  Tempest,  in  which 
he  acted  Prospero.  Somewhat  later  he 
appeared  in  Charles  Surface,  a  charac- 
ter certainly  ill-suited  to  his  constitu- 
tional gravity.  Sheridan  professed  to 
admire.  Boaden,  his  biographer  and 
eulogist,  quietly  remarks,  "  I  should 
better  have  liked  to  see  him  in  Joseph." 
A  friendly  newspaper  critic  of  the  day 
called  the  performance  "  Charles'  Res- 
toration;" another,  less  friendly,  said 
that  it  should  rather  be  described  as 
"  Charles'  Martyrdom."  This,  and  some 
other  freaks  of  Kemble's  genius,  are, 
doubtless,  to  be  classed  among  the  po- 
et's "  follies  of  the  wise." 

The  management  of  Drury  Lane, 
though  it  had  its  advantages  to  the 
interests  of  the  Kembles,  proved  not 
altogether  a  bed  of  roses  to  the  illus- 
trious incumbent.  He  once  fairly  risk 


248 


JOHN  PHILIP   KEMBLE. 


ed  his  life  in  a  duel  with  a  worthy  but 
over  spirited  member  of  his  corps? 
James  Aiken,  who  called  him  out  for 
some  fancied  affront.  Kemble  met  his 
antagonist  in  the  field,  received  his  shot, 

O  ' 

and  magnanimously  fired  his  own  pistol 
in  the  air.  The  afifair  thus  ended  in  a 
friendly  manner. 

Whatever,  however,  may  have  been 
the  internal  difficulties  of  the  manage- 
ment, there  was  one  trancendent  scene 
in  the  eye  of  the  public  which  sur- 
passed them  all.  This  was  the  pro- 
duction in  April,  1796,  of  the  cele- 
brated Vortigern,  the  culmination  of 
the  numerous  Ireland  Shakespearian 
forgeries  which,  with  an  audacity  never 
perhaps  equalled,  had,  during  the  pre- 
vious two  months,  been  heaped  upon 
one  another  in  reckless  profusion  and 
extravagance  of  invention.  The  easy 
faith  of  antiquarians  is  an  old  subject 
of  satire.  On  this  occasion  they  seem- 
ed determined  to  verify  all  the  jests 
which  had  ever  been  levelled  at  them. 
What  was  in  the  beginning  but  the 
freak  or  silly  counterfeit  of  a  young 
lawyer's  clerk  of  eighteen,  amusing 
himself  at  his  desk  with,  to  adopt  the 
most  charitable  supposition,. the  weak 
credulity  of  an  aged  parent,  was  speed- 
ily developed  into  an  affair  of  national 
importance.  It  began  with  the  produc- 
tion of  an  alleged  lease,  followed  by  a 
Protestant  Confession  of  Faith,  in  the 
handwriting  of  Shakespeare,  purport- 
ing to  be  derived  from  the  family  pa- 
pers of  a  descendant  of  a  brother  ac- 
tor of  the  great  dramatist.  Curiosity 
after  curiosity  of  the  most  inviting 
character,  among  other  things  an  epistle 
of  the  poet  to  Cowley,  a  love  letter, 
with  verses  and  a  lock  of  hair  to  Ann 


Hathaway,  a  miniature,  fragments  of 
manuscript  plays  never  published,  and 
finally  the  complete  historical  tragedy 
of  Vortigern,  ancient  king  of  Britain, 
were  produced.  Various  literary  com- 
mittees, composed  of  the  respectabili- 
ties of  literature,  in  which  clergymen 
were  well  represented,  sat  upon  these 
revelations,  examined  the  documents 
and  pronounced  them  genuine.  The  fa- 
mous Dr.  Parr,  learned  in  Greek,  with 
his  profound  critical  acumen,  was 
among  the  loudest  in  their  favor. 
When  it  was  understood  that  a  play 
capable  of  being  acted  was  found  with 
the  treasures,  there  was  quite  a  contest 
for  it  by  the  rival  theatres.  Sheridan 
secured  it  for  Drury  Lane  by  the  pay 
ment  of  three  hundred  pounds  and  the 
promise  of  half  the  receipts  for  sixty 
nights,  which  it  was  surely  expected 
to  run.  It  was  cast  with  the  whole 
strength  of  the  company,  with  the  ex- 
ception of  Mrs.  Siddons,  who  begged 
to  be  excused,  and  happily  the  favor 
was  granted  to  her.  Kemble  appear- 
ed as  the  hero ;  his  brother  Charles 
was  in  it,  with  Bensley,  Mrs.  Powell, 
Mrs.  Jordan  and  others  not  altogether 
forgotten.  A  large  and  distinguished 
audience  assembled  to  witnesss  this 
extraordinary  performance.  The  re- 
sult was  as  might  have  been  expected. 
The  play  was  irretrievably  damned  on 
the  instant ;  though  the  company  en- 
dured the  flatulent  dulness  till  toward 
the  close  it  fell  to  Kemble  to  delivei 
a  description  of  death,  a  mongrel  trav- 
esty of  several  Shakespearian  passages, 
in  which  occurred  the  line — 

And  when  this  solemn  mockery  is  o'er. 

This  was  delivered  by  the  tragedian 
in  his  most  sepulchral  tone  and  was 


JOHN  PHILIP  KEMBLE. 


249 


the  signal  for  the  final  explosion,  which 
came,  says  a  person  who  was  present, 
in  "the  most  discordant  howl  that 
ever  assailed  the  organs  of  hearing." 
When,  after  some  minutes,  it  subsided, 
Kemble  again  pointed  the  moral  of 
the  whole  by  repeating  the  line  with  his 
utmost  solemnity.  He  had  never  com- 
mitted himself  to  the  authenticity  of  the 
play ;  he  was  too  good  a  scholar  for  that ; 
his  ear  was  too  well  attuned  to  the 
language  of  Shakespeare,  and  he  had, 
besides,  a  prudent  adviser  in  his  friend 
Malone,  who  had  been  unsparing  in 
his  contempt  and  indignation  at  the 
whole  Ireland  proceedings.  He  had 
been  simply  passive  in  the  affair ;  but 
it  cost  him  much  vexation  in  the 
squabble  of  the  day  over  this  absurd 
business. 

To  return  to  his  more  legitimate 
performances  during  the  twelve  years 
in  which,  with  the  exception  of  a  short 
interval,  he  was  connected  with  the 
management  of  Drury  Lane.  The 
theatre  in  that  time  had  been  rebuilt 
and  witnessed  the  growth  and  devel- 
opment of  his  great  dramatic  triumphs. 
He  introduced  many  improvements  on 
the  stage  in  scenery  and  costume.  In 
"  Coriolanus,"  "  All's  Well  that  Ends 
Well,"  "Measure  for  Measure,"  and 
"  Cymbeline,"  in  which  he  played  the 
part  of  Posthumas,  and  other  revivals 
already  mentioned,  he  had,  with  the 
powerful  assistance  of  the  Siddons, 
and  the  resources  of  his  "  so  potent 
art,"  awakened  a  new  interest  in  the 
Shakespearian  drama.  He  had  pro- 
duced the  utmost  effect  in  his  original 
parts  of  Octavian,  the  Stranger,  and 
Rolla,  in  which  his  fine  physical  pow- 
ers and  impassioned  declamation  were 
32 


carried  to  the  highest  pitch.  One  of 
his  finest  attitudes  in  the  piece,  that 
in  which  he  bears  aloft  the  child  at  a 
crisis  of  the  action,  is  even  at  this  day 
familiar  to  the  admiration  of  the  pub- 
lic in  the  engravings  after  a  picture 
painted  by  his  friend,  Sir  Thomas 
Lawrence.  In  these,  as  in  all  his  best 
performances,  like  his  sister,  Mrs.  Sid- 
dons,  he  was  terribly  in  earnest.  He 
was  slow,  deliberate  and  painstaking 
in  study  and  preparation,  but  in  the 
moment  of  action  he  impressed  all  his 
powers  upon  his  work.  He  could  not 
otherwise  have  been  a  great  actor. 
Some  of  his  peculiarities,  however, 
continued  to  afford  food  for  the  critics 
and  wits,  who  wrote  epigrams  at  his 
expense. 

Many  were  the  jests  popularly 
current,  levelled  at  the  slowness  of 
his  utterance,  tragic  solemnity  and 
occasional  somewhat  pedantic  refine- 
ments in  delivery.  Talking  over  with 
Sheridan  some  proposed  piece  for  the 
stage,  that  arch  wit  is  said  to  have  ad- 
vised him  to  introduce  music  between 
the  pauses.  Kelly,  the  privileged  Irish 
actor,  once  disturbed  his  silent  gravity 
in  company  with  an  appeal  from  Ham- 
let, "  Come,  Kemble,  '  ope  thy  ponder- 
ous and  marble  jaws '  and  give  us  an 
opinion !"  George  Colman  said  of  his 
performance  of  Don  Felix  in  the 
"  Wonder,"  that  it  had  too  much  of 
the  Don  and  too  little  of  the  Felix. 
But  the  greatest  efforts  "of  the  wits 
were  directed  at  his  pronunciation  of 
"  aches  "  in  a  line  in  the  "  Tempest  " — 
Fill  all  thy  bones  with  aches,  make  thee  roar. 
Following  the  requirement  of  the  me- 
tre he  made  this  a  word  of  two  sylla- 
bles, pronouncing  it  aitches.  The  pit 


250 


JOHN  PHILIP  KEMBLE. 


demurred,  but  Kemble  persisted,  and 
tvhen,  in  the  absence  of  the  manager  in 
consequence  of  an  attack  of  rheumatism, 
George  Frederick  Cooke  was  called 
upon  to  play  the  part,  he  got  over  the 
difficulty  by  omitting  the  passage  alto- 
gether. Like  numerous  actors  and 
many  persons  of  eminence  off  the 
stage,  Kemble  was  attracted  to  attempt 
the  very  opposite  of  that  which  was 
suited  to  his  genius,  and  in  which  he 
was  most  successful.  We  have  noticed 
his  performance  of  Charles  Surface, 
with  the  sport  of  the  wits  on  that  oc- 
casion. He  had  his  eye  for  a  while 
steadily  on  Falstaff,  whom  he  proposed 
to  relieve  of  his  usual  grossness  on 
the  boards  and  introduce  in  his  intel- 
lectual and  gentlemanly  capacity  as 
"  Sir  John  to  all  Europe."  He  even 
got  so  far  as  to  make  choice  of  a  beard 
for  the  character ;  but  he  never  brought 
it  on  the  stage.  Sir  Walter  Scott  tells 
a  story  of  his  imperturbable  self-com- 
mand while  engrossed  with  this  favor- 
ite idea.  They  were  siting  together  at 
the  annual  entertainment  given  by  the 
artists  at  the  private  opening  of  the 
Royal  Academy  Exhibition.  Kemble 
was  in  the  midst  of  a  dissertation  em- 
bodying his  views  of  Falstaff,  when 
the  nuge  chandelier  above  the  table 
descended,  crushing  glass  and  china, 
and  threatening  the  illustrious  com- 
pany with  destruction.  All  was  panic 
and  confusion  save  in  the  mind  and 
speech  of  Kemble,  and  Scott,  as  he 
confesses,  meditating  retreat,  was  firm- 
ly held  to  the  lofty  analysis  of  the 
humorous  old  knight. 

At  the  close  of  the  season  in  the 
summer  of  1802,  Kemble  finally  with- 
drew from  the  management  of  Drury 


Lane,  with  a  view  of  becoming  one  of 
the  proprietors  of  Covent  Garden.  Be- 
fore entering  upon  this  new  field,  he 
employed  an  interval  of  leisure  in  a 
trip  on  the  continent :  on  his  way  to 
Paris,  he  visited  Douay,  the  scene  of 
his  early  studies,  and  found  it  suffer- 
ing sadly  from  the  disorders  of  the 
country,  in  a  state  of  ruin,  poverty  and 
desolation  not  to  be  described.  "I 
had  not  the  heart,"  he  writes  in  a  let- 
ter to  his  brother  Charles,  "  to  go  up 
to  my  old  room."  Paris  he  paints  in 
few  words: — "such  a  scene  of  mag- 
nificence, filth,  pleasure,  poverty,  gai- 
ety, distress,  virtue  and  vice,  as  consti- 
tutes a  greater  miracle  than  was  ever 
chronicled  in  history."  Here  he  moved 
in  the  best  English  society,  of  which 
Lord  and  Lady  Holland  were  the  lead- 
ers, and  became  acquainted  with  many 
of  the  French  actors,  particularly  with 
Talma,  who  expressed  a  desire  to 
adapt  Pizarro  to  the  French  stage. 
Passing  thence  to  Spain,  he  spent  some 
time  at  Madrid,  perfecting  himself  in 
the  Spanish  language.  At  this  place 
he  was  informed  of  the  death  of  his 
father,  the  venerable  Eoger  Kemble, 
who  passed  away  at  the  age  of  eighty- 
two.  Writing  to  Charles,  who  had 
communicated  the  event  to  him,  he 
expressed  the  most  tender  feelings  of 
sympathy  with  his  mother,  and  says 
of  his  father  with  a  kindly  touch  of 
nature :  "  How  in  vain  have  I  delighted 
myself  in  thousands  of  inconvenient  oc- 
currences on  this  journey,  with  the 
thought  of  contemplating  my  father's 
cautious  incredulity  while  I  related 
them  to  him.  Millions  of  things  un- 
interesting, it  may  be,  to  any  body  else, 
I  had  treasured  up  for  his  surprise  and 


JOHN  PHILIP  KEMBLE. 


251 


scrutiny.  It  is  God's  pleasure  that  he 
is  gone  from  us ;  once  more,  the  peace 
of  the  just  be  with  him."  • 

Having  perfected  the  Covent  Garden 
arrangement  by  the  purchase  of  a  share 
of  one-sixth  of  the  property  for  twenty- 
three  thousand  pounds  from  the  vet- 
eran comedian,  Lewis,  the  stage  man- 
ager, Kemble  became  his  successor, 
making  his  first  appearance  at  the 
theatre  in  September,  1803,  in  his 
favorite  character  of  Hamlet.  Mrs. 
Siddons  was  again  with  him,  and  no 
less  a  personage  than  George  Frederick 
Cooke,  who  for  two  or  three  years  had 
been  established  at  Covent  Garden  as 
something  of  a  rival  of  Kemble.  This 
did  not  prevent  the  manager  from  giv- 
ing him  every  opportunity  for  the  ex- 
ercise of  his  extraordinary  powers. 
Kemble  acted  Richmond  to  Cooke's 
Richard,  one  of  his  great  parts;  old 
Norval  to  Cooke's  Glenalvon,  Mrs.  Sid- 
dons  acting  Lady  Randolph ;  and  An- 
tonio to  Cooke's  Shylock.  Here  was 
a  brilliant  opportunity,  but  Cooke's 
irregularities  were  in  the  way  of  any 
advantage  to  his  reputation.  In  the 
midst  of  the  efforts  of  the  new  man- 
ager for  the  reputation  of  the  stage,  in 
the  winter  of  1804,  came  the  Master 
Betty  flurry,  when  that  juvenile  prod- 
igy came  heralded  from  the  provinces 
to  create  an  unprecedented  excitement 
among  the  playgoers  of  Covent  Garden 
and  Drury  Lane,  for  he  acted  at  both 
theatres.  The  representative  for  the 
time  on  the  London  stage  of  Douglas, 
Romeo  and  Hamlet,  in  the  presence  of 
Kemble,  was  a  boy  of  thirteen.  After 
this  wa,s  over,  there  was  a  return  to 
more  legitimate  performances,  and 
Kemble  and  Siddons  were  again  su- 


preme in  the  Shakespearian  drama. 
The  great  Roman  plays,  Coriolanus 
and  Julius  Caesar,  with  which  must  be 
included  Addison's  Cato,  became  now, 
in  these  later  years  of  his  career,  more 
than  ever  the  stronghold  of  his  genius. 
His  powers  were  admirably  suited  to 
them ;  they  afforded,  in  their  calm  com- 
posure and  bursts  of  passion,  fine  scope 
for  his  stately  dignity  of  mien,  his 
graceful  attitude  and  studied  declam- 
ation ;  he  was  greatly  admired  in  them 
by  the  best  judges,  and  in  them  he  has 
had  no  successor. 

An  actor's  life  is  exposed  to  many 
vicissitudes.  The  destruction  of  Co- 
vent  Garden  Theatre  by  fire  in  Sep- 
tember, 1808,  fairly  tested  the  philoso- 
phy of  our  stoic  performer.  He  had 
now  to  put  the  principles  in  action  he 
had  so  often  feigned  upon  the  stage. 
At  first  he  appears  to  have  been 
somewhat  overcome,  if  we  may  so  in- 
terpret the  peculiar  stage  language  in 
which  he  expressed  his  feelings.  Boa- 
den  visited  the  family  in  Great  Rus- 
sel  street  the  morning  after  the  fire. 
Mrs.  Kemble  was  in  tears  at  the  pros- 
pect of  beginning  life  over  again  in 
the  repairs  of  their  shattered  fortunes  ; 
Charles  Kemble  sat  in  silence ;  King 
John  seemed  totally  absorbed  in  the 
contemplation  of  affairs,  but  was  feed- 
ing his  imagination  with  the  melan- 
choly details.  At  last  he  broke  out 
with  this  pattern  declamation, — "  Yes, 
it  has  perished,  that  magnificent  the- 
atre, which  for  all  the  purposes  of  ex- 
hibition  or  comfort  was  the  first  in 
Europe.  It  is  gone,  with  all  its  treas- 
ures, that  library  which  contained  all 
those  immortal  productions  of  our 
countrymen,  prepared  for  the  purposes 


252 


JOHN  PHILIP  KEMBLE. 


of  representation  !  That  vast  collec- 
tion of  music,  composed  by  the  greatest 
geniuses  in  that  science — by  Handel, 
Arne  and  others ; — most  of  it  manu- 
script in  the  original  score !  That 
wardrobe,  stored  with  the  costume  of 
all  ages  and  nations,  accumulated  by 
unwearied  research,  and  at  an  incred- 
ible expense.  Scenery,  the  triumph 
of  the  art,  unrivalled  for  its  accuracy, 
and  so  exquisitely  finished  that  it 
might  be  the  ornament  of  your  draw- 
ing-rooms, were  they  only  large  enough 
to  contain  it.  Of  all  this  vast  treasure 
nothing  now  remains  but  the  arms 
of  England  over  the  entrance  of  the 
theatre,  and  the  Roman  eagle  standing 
solitary  in  the  market  place."  The 
Roman  eagle  he  no  doubt  felt  to  be 
typical  of  himself. 

A  noble  friend  came  to  the  rescue. 
Lord  Percy,  who  assisted  him  with  the 
company  of  soldiers  for  his  stage  per- 
formance at  Alnwick  at  his  setting  out 
in  the  world,  was  now  the  Duke  of 
Northumberland,  and  felt  under  some 
obligation  to  Kemble  for  instructing 
his  son,  another  Lord  Percy,  in  elocu- 
tion. The  duke,  ever  an  admirer  of 
Kemble's  ability,  with  prompt  sym- 
pathy for  his  misfortune,  placed  the 
sum  of  ten  thousand  pounds  at  his  dis- 
posal. Kemble  accepted  it  as  a  loan, 
upon  which  interest  was  to  be  paid. 
The  corner-stone  of  the  new  theatre 
was,  in  due  time,  laid  by  the  Prince  of 
Wales,  with  brilliant  ceremonials,  and 
at  the  dinner  which  followed,  his  grace 
of  Northumberland  crowned  the  fes- 
tivities by  sending  the  cancelled  bond, 
as  he  expressed  it,  to  light  the  bonfire 
on  the  joyful  occasion.  It  was  a  mu- 
nificent gift,  and  felt  to  be  no  less  a 


tribute  to  the  actor's  genius,  than  to 
his  necessity.  When  the  theatre  was 
finished,  as  if  to  offset  the  felicity  of 
the  occasion,  on  the  very  opening  night 
arose  that  unprecedented  commotion, 
famous  in  English  theatrical  history  as 
the  O.  P.  riots.  The  improvements  and 
decoration  of  the  new  theatre  having 
involved  a  vast  expense,  to  secure  some 
adequate  remuneration  an  additional 
portion  of  the  house  was  set  apart  for 
private  boxes,  and  the  tickets  of  admis- 
sion were  raised,  a  shilling  for  the  boxes, 
and  sixpence  for  the  pit.  The  house 
opened  on  the  18th  of  September,  1809, 
with  Kemble  and  Mrs.  Siddons  in 
Macbeth,  but  the  performance  was  in- 
terrupted from  the  beginning  by  hide- 
ous noises.  The  actors  went  through 
their  parts,  but  not  a  sentence  wras  suf- 
fered to  be  heard.  There  was  an  ef- 
fort to  put  an  end  to  the  disturbance 
by  the  police,  and  it  proved  insuffi- 
cient. The  next  night  the  disorder 
was  renewed.  The  mob,  paying  for 
their  tickets,  demanded  the  abolition 
of  the  boxes,  wrhich  interfered  with 
the  gallery  privileges  of  the  people, 
and  set  up  the  cry  O.  P.  or  Old  Prices. 
The  theatre,  for  no  fewer  than  sixty- 
six  nights,  was  turned  into  a  scene,  a 
very  pandemonium,  of  the  wildest  rev- 
elry and  riot.  The  proprietors  intro- 
duced prize-fighters  into  the  arena  to 
quell  the  ruffians.  This  only  exaspe- 
rated them  the  more.  It  became  a 
nightly  entertainment  for  the  worst  oi 
all  mobs,  a  British  mob.  A  respect- 
able lawyer,  named  Clifford,  who  ima 
gined  he  was  serving  the  cause  of  Eng- 
lish liberty,  led  and  fomented  the  agi- 
tation, and  when  he  was  arrested  bj 
the  box-keeper,  one  Brandon,  was  dis 


JOHN  PHILIP  KEMJBLE. 


253 


charged  by  the  court,  and  instituted 
an  action  for  false  imprisonment,  in 
which  he  was  successful.  The  O.  P. 
riots  in  the  theatre,  with  the  O.  P. 
songs  and  dances,  became  the  mania 
and  fashion  of  the  day,  as  brutality  in 
large  cities  is  apt  to  become.  It  was 
for  the  time  a  kind  of  Tom  and  Jerry 
life,  acted  in  the  pit  instead  of  upon 
the  stage — a  rare  opportunity  for  the 
fancy  shop  boys  and  disreputable  row- 
dies of  the  metropolis,  who  managed 
with  great  adroitness,  spite  of  every 
precaution,  to  introduce  into  the  house 
various  cumbrous  instruments  of  of- 
fence,— watchman's  rattles,  dustman's 
bells,  postboy's  horns,  trombones,  blud- 
geons and  gigantic  placards.  Kemble 
was  jeered  and  insulted  by  every  form 
of  caricature  and  annoyance,  and  at 
length,  to  the  disgrace  of  the  muni- 
cipal law  and  police  of  the  city,  was 
compelled  to  yield.  The  private  boxes 
were  reduced  to  their  old  number  and 
the  pit  admission  to  its  old  rate ;  the  ex- 
tra shilling  for  the  boxes  was  permitted 
to  stand ;  but  the  spirited  door-keeper, 
Brandon,  was  meanly  required  to  be 
dismissed,  and  offensive  personal  apol- 
ogies were  exacted  from  Kemble.  The 
next  year,  when  a  few  private  boxes 
were  again  added,  the  riot  broke  out 
anew,  and  Kemble,  with  his  brother 
proprietors,  were  again  obliged  to  suc- 
cumb to  the  portentous  outcry,  O.  P. 

Kemble  continued,  with  an  interval 
of  absence  from  London,  several  years 
longer  on  the  stage,  illustrating  the 
period,  though  it  was  a  season  of  failing 
fortunes  with  the  theatre,  by  his  mag- 
nificent performance  of  his  great  Ro- 
man plays.  In  King  John,  Penruddock, 
Hamlet,  Wolsey  and  Macbeth  he  held 


his  own  to  the  last.  As  the  time 
which  he  had  determined  upon  for  his 
retirement  approached,  he  visited  Ed- 
inburgh and  gave  a  series  of  perfor- 
mances, closing  with  Macbeth,  when  he 
recited  an  epilogue  written  for  the 
occasion  by  one  of  his  noblest  appre- 
ciators,  Sir  Walter  Scott.  His  fare- 
well performance  on  leaving  the  stage 
took  place  at  Covent  Garden  on  the 
23d  of  June,  1817,  when  he  acted  Cor 
iolanus  before  one  of  the  most  distin- 
guished audiences  ever  gathered  in  the 
metropolis.  A  dinner  given  in  his 
honor  by  his  friends  and  brother  ac- 
tors followed,  memorable  for  the  array 
of  genius  which  was  present.  Lord 
Holland  presided,  supported  by  the 
Duke  of  Bedford.  The  French  actor, 
Talma,  was  among  the  guests.  Re- 
marks were  made  by  West,  the  Pres- 
ident of  the  Royal  Academy;  Young 
the  inheritor  on  the  stage  of  the  depart- 
ing actor's  honors ;  Charles  Mathews ; 
and  others  of  hardly  less  renown.  Flax- 
man,  the  sculptor,  was  present  and  had 
contributed  the  design  for  the  silver 
vase  presented  to  Kemble  on  the  occa- 
sion. But  the  most  enduring  memorial 
of  the  evening  is  the  noble  ode  written 
by  the  poet  Campbell  and  recited  to 
the  company  by  Young. 

"Pride  of  the  British  Stage 

A  long  and  last  adieu. 
***** 

Time  may  again  revive, 

But  ne'er  efface  the  charm, 
When  Cato  spoke  in  him  alive, 

Or  Hotspur  kindled  warm. 
What  soul  was  not  resign'd  entire 

To  the  deep  sorrows  of  the  Moor  I 
What  English  heart  was  not  on  tire, 

With  him  at  Agincourt  ? " 

Kemble,  worn  in   health,   suffering 
from  an  asthmatic  affection,  which  is 


254 


JOHN   PHILIP  KEMBLE. 


said  to  have  imparted  that  peculiar 
hoarse  and  sepulchral  tone  which  at 
times  marked  his  delivery,  turned 
a^ain  to  the  continent  for  recreation 

o 

and  repose.  Benefited  in  health,  he 
passed  several  seasons  with  his  wife  at 
Toulouse,  till  the  acrimony  of  the 
French  political  parties  of  the  place, 
and  their  general  dislike  to  English- 
men drove  him  to  Switzerland.  Pre- 
viously to  settling  down  in  his  new 
abode  he  visited  England  on  business 
connected  with  his  interest  in  Covent 
Garden,  and  made  arrangements  for  the 
sale  of  his  fine  library,  which  it  was 
not  convenient  for  him  to  carry  with 
him  abroad ;  while  the  money  which 
it  produced  was  an  object  to  him,  in 
the  increase  of  a  somewhat  narrow 
income.  Like  Garrick  he  had  been 
a  diligent  and  successful  collector 
of  old  plays.  This  portion  of  his 
library  was  sold  to  the  Duke  of 
Devonshire  for  two  thousand  pounds. 
His  miscellaneous  books,  under  the 
hammer  of  Evans,  brought  as  much 
more,  and  his  theatrical  engravings 
about  three  hundred  pounds. 

The  Swiss  residence,  which  contin- 
ued his  home  for  the  remainder  of  his 
life,  was  a  delightful  villa  at  Lausanne, 
on  the  edge  of  the  town,  overlooking 
the  lake,  with  fine  views  of  Mont 
Blanc  and  the  surrounding  mountains. 
The  cultivation  of  his  garden,  with  his 
enjoyment  of  his  usual  intellectual 


pursuits  and  the  excellent  society  of 
the  place,  filled  up  the  outline  of  a  life 
doubtless  peopled  also  with  many 
strange  and  exciting  visions  of  the 
past.  Mrs.  Siddons  came  to  visit  him 
in  this  retirement.  "  Both  he  and  Mrs, 
Kemble,"  wrote  her  daughter,  who  ac- 
companied her,  "  seem  as  perfectly  hap- 
py  as  I  ever  saw  two  human  beings. 
Their  situation  is  a  blessed  one."  In 
the  winter  of  1822,  Kemble  with  his 
wife  visited  Italy  and  observed  with 
interest  the  historical  monuments  of 
Rome,  but  in  no  pedantic  spirit ;  he 
was  more  moved  by  the  degradation 
of  the  people,  under  the  influences  of 
bad  government  in  the  present.  Fail- 
ing health  began  to  press  sorely  upon 
him.  He  returned  to  Lausanne  with 
difficulty,  and  a  few  months  after,  •  on 
the  26th  of  February,  1823,  died  sud- 
denly of  apoplexy.  His  remains  were 
interred  in  a  graveyard  at  Lausanne, 
They  might  worthily  have  found  their 
rest  by  the  side  of  Garrick  in  West- 
minster Abbey.  He  is  represented, 
however,  in  that  national  gathering  oi 
English  heroes,  by  a  statue,  sketched 
by  Flaxman,  in  which  he  is  exhibited 
in  his  personation  of  Cato.  His  wife, 
making  her  home  in  England,  survived 
him  twenty-two  years,  dying  in  1845, 
at  the  age  of  ninety.  She  had  retired 
from  the  stage  a  few  years  after  her 
marriage,  her  last  performance  being 
in  1796. 


ABIGAIL    ADAMS. 


THE  wife  of  John  Adams,  second 
president  of  the  United  States, 
was  born  at  Weymouth,  Massachusetts, 
November  22d,  1744.  Her  maiden 
name  was  Abigail  Smith,  and  she 
came  from  the  old  stock  of  New-Eng- 
land colonists.  Her  father  was  the 
Congregational  minister  at  Weymouth 
for  more  than  forty  years ;  and  on  her 
mother's  side,  the  Quincy  family,  she 
inherited  a  claim  to  belong  to  those 
who  were  distinguished  and  prominent 
in  the  educational  and  religious  move- 
ments of  the  early  Puritans.  Abigail 
was  the  second  of  three  daughters,  and 
when  a  girl,  being  rather  delicate,  was 
not  sent  to  school  with  other  girls  of 
her  age  and  position.  Her  education 
and  training,  consequently,  consisted  in 
great  measure  in  a  somewhat  discur- 
sive course  of  reading,  and  she  owed  a 
deep  and  abiding  debt  of  gratitude  to 
her  grandmother,  Elizabeth  Quincy, 
who  contributed  largely  towards  form- 
ing and  improving  her  taste  and  judg- 
ment, and  assisting  her  in  learning  les- 
sons of  practical  wisdom  and  goodness. 
Mrs.  Adams,  however,  we  are  assured 
by  her  son,  John  Quincy  Adams,  was 
well  versed  in  the  best  literature  of  the 
period,  and  was  possessed  with  a  warm 


relish  for  the  beauties  and  high  moral 
principles  of  the  poets  and  moralists 
of  the  reign  of  Queen  Anne.  Abigail 
and  her  sisters  "  were  familiar  with  the 
pages  of  Shakespeare  and  Milton,  of 
Dryden  and  Pope,  of  Addison  and 
Swift,  no  less  than  with  those  of  Til- 
lotson  and  Berkeley;  nor  were  they 
unacquainted  with  those  of  Butler  and 

Locke Perhaps  no  writer  of 

any  age  or  nation  ever  exercised  a 
more  beneficent  influence  over  the  taste 
and  manners  of  the  female  sex,  than 
Addison,  by  the  papers  of  the  Specta- 
tor, Guardian  and  Tatler.  With  these 
the  daughters  of  Mrs.  Smith  were,  f  rora 
their  childhood,  familiar.  The  senten- 
tious energy  of  Young,  sparkling  amid 
the  gloom  of  his  Night  Thoughts,  like 
diamonds  from  the  lamp  of  a  sepulchre ; 
the  patriotic  and  profound  sensibilities 
of  Thomson  and  Collins,  preeminently 
the  poets  of  freedom,  kindling  the  love 
of  country  with  the  concentrated  ra- 
diance and  splendors  of  imagination, 
were  felt  and  admired  by  Mrs.  Adams, 
in  her  youth,  and  never  lost  their  value 
to  her  mind  in  mature  age."  Trained 
under  such  influences,  the  superior  na- 
tive powers  and  faculties  of  Mrs.  Ad- 
ams,  found  their  full  development,  and 

'J355) 


256 


ABIGAIL  ADAMS. 


she  became  the  wisest,  safest  and  most 
reliable  counsellor  of  her  husband  in 
the  busy  and  somewhat  stormy  career 
of  political  life.  Her  marriage  took 
place  October  25th,  1764,  and  John 
Adams  being  at  the  time  an  active 
and  rather  ambitious  young  lawyer, 
she  spent  the  first  eight  or  ten  years 
of  wedded  life  in  the  discharge  of 
home  duties  and  in  full  sympathy 
with  the  patriotic  movements  which 
soon  after  led  to  a  collision  between 
the  colonies  and  the  British  govern- 
ment. 

Entrance  into  the  public  service  seem- 
ed almost  a  necessity  at  this  period 
to  a  man  of  John  Adams'  native  capa- 
bilities and  prominent  position.  The 
course  of  events  which  brought  Boston 
into  the  forefront  in  the  struggle  with 
the  mother  country,  naturally  aroused 
every  man  of  note  and  character  in 
New  England.  Adams  was  chosen  as 
one  of  a  committee  to  meet  other  public 
spirited  men  in  a  Congress  at  Philadel- 
phia, September,  1774,  in  order  to  con- 
sult upon  existing  and  threatened  dan- 
gers, and  to  provide  as  far  as  possible 
for  combined  effort  in  the  common  be- 
half. Beginning  at  this  date,  and  con- 
tinuing all  through  life,  as  far  as  occa- 
sion permitted  or  required,  Mrs.  Ad- 
ams and  her  husband  kept  up  a  regu- 
lar confidential  correspondence,  in  which 
she  bore  her  full  part  and  justified  the 
high  praise  we  have  bestowed  upon  her. 
"I  must  entreat  you,"  Adams  wrote, 
"  my  dear  partner  in  all  the  joys  and 
sorrows,  prosperity  and  adversity  of 
my  life,  to  take  a  part  with  me  in  the 
struggle.  I  pray  God  for  your  health, 
and  entreat  you  to  rouse  your  whole 
attention  to  the  family,  the  stock,  the 


farm,  the  dairy.  Let  every  article  of 
expense,  which  can  possibly  be  spared, 
be  retrenched.  Keep  the  hands  atten- 
tive to  their  business,  and  let  the  most 
prudent  measures  of  every  kind  be 
adopted  and  pursued  with  alacrity 
and  spirit," 

Mrs.  Adams,  at  this  time,  while  her 
husband  was  absent  at  Philadelphia, 
was  residing  at  their  cottage  at  Brain- 
tree,  with  four  little  children,  the  eld- 
est not  ten  years  old.  The  battle  <  »f 
Lexington  had  taken  place,  and  the 
whole  country  around  Boston  was 
alive  with  men  eager  to  besiege  the 
king's  troops,  and  bring  the  contest  to 
a  distinct  issue.  Danger  was  imminent, 
and  no  one  could  tell  from  what  quar- 
ter it  might  come,  or  say  where  the 
hand  of  the  depredator  might  strike. 
Writing  to  her  husband,  under  date  of 
May  24th,  1775,  Mrs.  Adams  gives  a 
graphic  account  of  the  alarm  j  list  then 
occasioned  by  the  approach  of  a  small 
body  of  British  soldiers.  "  Our  house 
has  been,  upon  this  alarm,"  she  says, 
"  a  scene  of  confusion.  Soldiers  com- 
ing in  for  a  lodging,  for  breakfast,  for 
supper,  for  drink,  etc.  Sometimes  ref- 
ugees from  Boston,  tired  and  fatigued, 
seek  an  asylum  fbr  a  day,  a  night,  a 
week.  You  can  hardly  imagine  how 
we  live My  best  wishes  at- 
tend you,  both  for  your  health  and 
happiness;  and  that  you  may  be  di- 
rected into  the  wisest  and  best  meas 
ures  for  our  safety,  and  the  security 
of  our  prosperity.  I  wish  you  were 
nearer  to  us.  We  know  not  what  a 
day  will  bring  forth,  nor  what  distress 
one  hour  may  throw  us  into.  Hither- 
to I  have  been  able  to  maintain  a  calm- 
ness and  presence  of  mind ;  and  hope 


ABIGAIL  ADAMS. 


257 


I  shall,  let  the  exigency  of  the  time  be 
what  it  will." 

The  value  of  John  Adams'  presence 
and  services  were  so  great  in  Congress, 
that  he  could  not  be  spared,  and  con- 
sequently Mrs.  Adams  was  called  up- 
on to  exercise  all  her  fortitude,  and 
bear  up,  in  great  measure  alone,  under 
the  terrible  trials  of  war,  pestilence  and 
such  like  evils.  Yet  she  did  not  mur- 
mur, and  she  sympathized  fully  in  the 
glowing  words  of  her  husband,  who 
had  been  the  great  and  eloquent  de- 
fender of  the  Declaration  of  Independ- 
ence in  July,  1776.  "You  will  think 
me  transported  with  enthusiasm,"  he 
writes,  "but  I  am  not.  I  am  well 
aware  of  the  toil  and  blood  and  treas- 
ure that  it  will  cost  us  to  maintain  this 
declaration,  and  support  and  defend 
these  States.  Yet,  through  all  the 
gloom,  I  can  see  the  rays  of  ravishing 
light  and  glory.  I  can  see  the  end  is 
more  than  worth  all  the  means,  and 
that  posterity  will  triumph  in  that 
day's  transaction,  even  although  we 
should  rue  it,  which  I  trust  in  God  we 
shall  not." 

Early  in  the  spring  of  1778,  Mrs.  Ad- 
ams was  under  the  necessity  of  parting 
with  her  husband  and  eldest  son  for  a 
season.  Adams  was  sent  to  France  to 
join  with  Franklin  and  others  in  efforts 
to  induce  the  government  to  extend  aid 
to  the  United  States.  Adams  returned 
home  in  the  summer  of  the  next  year, 
and  was  again  deputed  to  foreign  ser- 
vice. After  a  tedious  and  dangerous  voy- 
age, he  reached  Paris,  in  February, 
1780 ;  thence  he  proceeded  to  Holland, 
and  accomplished  there  what  his  grand- 
Bon  terms  "  the  greatest  triumph  of  his 
life,  in  persuading  the  Dutch  to  give 
33 


material  aid  to  our  country,  and  to  enter 
into  a  treaty,  October,  1782,  between 
the  ancient  republic  and  its  newly  born 
sister.  Mrs.  Adams  did  not  accompany 
her  husband  at  this  time,  but  remained 
at  her  post  at  home,  in  the  cheerful  dis- 
charge of  the  duties  incumbent  upon 
her,  and  in  both  waiting  and  watching 
for  the  future  of  her  native  land. 

The  public  service  requiring  Adams  to 
remain  abroad,  his  wife  and  only  daugh- 
ter joined  him,  on  the  continent,  in  the 
summer  of  1784.  "Her  arrival  com- 
pletely altered  the  face  of  his  affairs. 
He  forgot  the  ten  years  of  almost  con- 
stant separation  which  had  taken  place, 
and  became  reconciled  at  once  to  a  long- 
er stay  abroad.  No  man  depended 
more  than  he  upon  the  tranquil  enjoy- 
ments of  home  for  his  happiness.  He 
took  the  house  at  Auteuil,  near  Paris, 
to  which  he  had  been  removed  in  the 
preceding  year  for  recovery  from  his 
illness,  and  returned  to  a  state  of  life 
placid  and  serene.  With  his  wife,  his 
eldest  son,  John  Quincy,  then  just  ris- 
ing into  a  youth  of  the  greatest  prom- 
ise, and  a  daughter,  in  whom  any  body 
would  have  felt  a  pride,  about  him, 
near  the  society  of  a  cultivated  me- 
tropolis, into  which  his  official  position 
gave  him  free  admission,  he  had  little 
to  do  but  to  enjoy  the  day  as  it  passed, 
heedless  of  the  morrow.  Some  little 
notion  of  his  way  of  life  may  be  gath- 
ered from  the  fresh  and  sprightly  let- 
ters of  Mrs.  Adams,  addressed,  during 
this  time,  to  her  friends  and  relations 
at  home,  which  have  been  already  giv- 
en to  the  world." 

In  the  spring  of  1785,  Mrs.  Adams 
accompanied  her  husband  to  England, 
he  having  been  appointed  the  first 


258 


ABIGAIL  ADAMS. 


American  Minister  to  the  Court  of  St. 
James.  It  was  a  position  of  no  little 
difficulty  as  well  as  importance  to  both 
Mr.  and  Mrs.  Adams.  The  pride  and 
haughtiness  of  the  nobility,  the  stub- 
born will  of  George  III.,  the  entirely 
undefined  position  and  rank  of  an  am- 
bassador just  arrived  and  coming  from 
a  land  recently  in  subjection  to  the 
British  crown,  all  portended  difficul- 
ties and  annoyances  not  altogether 
easy  to  endure ;  and  in  addition,  so 
far  as  his  wife  was  concerned,  the 
lofty  assumptions  of  the  leaders  and 
rulers  of  society,  and  their  ill  conceal- 
ed contempt  for  parvenus,  like  Ameri- 
cans, foreshadowed  trials  quite  as  dif- 
ficult in  their  way  to  be  borne,  as  those 
to  which  Adams  was  subjected. 

It  is  a  marked  confirmation  of  the 
high  estimate  which  we  have  expressed 
respecting  Mrs.  Adams,  that  she  bore 
herself  with  most  admirable  skill  and 
spirit  in  her  difficult  position.  A  true 
and  genuine  Christian  lady,  without 
pretension  or  affectation,  claiming 
nothing  for  herself  beyond  what  every 
lady  is  entitled  to,  and  expecting  and 
requiring  from  the  haughtiest  the  con- 
sideration due  to  her  rank  as  represent- 
ing the  women  of  her  native  country, 
she  seems  to  have  charmed  the  nobili- 
ty and  votaries  of  fashionable  life  by 
her  unaifected  simplicity,  gentleness, 
refinement  and  courtesy,  and  fully  to 
have  sustained  the  character  which  her 
countrywomen  may  well  have  admired. 
Annoyances  there  were,  it  is  true,  and 
enough  of  them ;  but  Mrs.  Adams  al- 
ways proved  herself  equal  to  every 
emergency,  and  nevei  tarnished  the 
fair  fame  of  the  people  to  whom  she 
belonged. 


Her  letters,  as  we  have  noted,  give  a 
clear  insight  into  matters  of  interest 
and  value  to  herself  and  her  native 
land.  Writing  to  her  sister,  on  one 
occasion,  she  says  :  "  When  I  reflect 
on  the  advantages  which  the  people  of 
America  possess  over  the  most  polished 
of  other  nations,  the  ease  with  which 
property  is  obtained,  the  plenty  which 
is  so  equally  distributed,  their  personal 
liberty  and  security  of  life  and  pro- 
perty, I  feel  grateful  to  heaven  who 
marked  out  my  lot  in  this  happy  land ; 
at  the  same  time  I  deprecate  that  rest- 
less spirit,  and  that  baneful  ambition 
and  thirst  for  power,  which  will  finally 
make  us  as  wretched  as  our  neigh- 
bors." 

In  the  spring  of  1788,  Mrs.  Adams, 
with  her  husband  and  family,  bade 
adieu  to  Europe,  and  returned  to  the 
United  States.  Adams  was  elected 
vice-president,  and  for  eight  years  dis- 
charged the  duties  of  his  office  with 
dignity,  conscientiousness  and  success. 
Mrs.  Adams,  who  had  so  well  sustain- 
ed her  difficult  position  abroad,  was 
now  fully  alive  to  the  present  duties 
and  obligations.  Abundant  evidence 
exists  of  the  admirable  way  in  which 
she  presided  in  her  residence  at  New 
York  and  afterwards  at  Philadelphia, 
and  displayed  those  superior  excel- 
lences of  mind  and  temper  for  which 
she  was  distinguished.  Her  hus- 
band's reliance  upon  her  sympathy, 
her  judgment,  her  clear  insight,  was 
unbounded,  and  it  cannot  be  doubted 
that  she  exercised  an  influence  over  him 
most  happy  and  beneficial  in  its  effects. 
On  taking  up  his  abode  in  New 
York,  Mr.  Adams  secured  the  beauti 
ful  rural  residence  of  Mrs.  Jephson  at 


ABIGAIL  ADAMS 


259 


Richmond  Hill.  It  was,  we  are  assur- 
ed, the  most  agreeable  place  on  the 
island,  and  admirably  adapted  to  the 
views  of  both  the  vice-president  and 
his  wife. 

In  the  autumn  of  1790,  Mrs.  Adams 
was  subjected  to  the  annoyance  of  su- 
perintending the  removal  of  her  house- 
hold to  Philadelphia,  this  city  having 
been  selected  for  the  national  capital 
during  the  following  ten  years.  It 
was  a  tedious  and  toilsome  operation, 
but  was  bravely  endured  and  success- 
fully accomplished.  Writing  to  her 
daughter,  she  says:  "Though  there 
remains  neither  bush  nor  shrub  upon 
it,  and  very  few  trees,  except  the  pine 
grove  behind  it,  yet  Bush  Hill  (her 
new  residence),  is  a  very  beautiful 
place ;  but  the  grand  and  the  sublime  I 
left  at  Richmond  Hill.  The  cultiva- 
tion in  sight  and  the  prospect  are  supe- 
rior ;  but  the  Schuylkill  is  no  more 
like  the  Hudson  than  I  to  Hercules." 

Society  in  Philadelphia,  at  this  date, 
was  distinguished  for  its  brilliancy 
and  liveliness.  The  number  of  beau- 
tiful women  was  unusually  large, 
and  as,  in  addition  to  personal  attrac- 
tiveness, there  were  superadded  the 
higher  elements  of  intellectual  culture, 
the  Quaker  City  was  more  gay  than  it 
has  ever  been  since,  or  is  ever  likely 
to  be  again.  "  I  should  spend  a  very 
dissipated  winter,"  Mrs.  Adams  wrote, 
"  were  I  to  accept  one-half  of  the  invi- 
tations I  receive,  particularly  to  the 
routs  or  tea-and-cards." 

During  the  recess  of  Congress,  and 
when  occasion  served,  or  the  state  of 
her  health  required,  Mrs.  Adams  was 
absent  from  the  seat  of  government, 
arid  sought  relaxation  and  pleasure  in 


her  country  home  at  Quincy,  Massa- 
chusetts. She  kept  up  a  regular  cor- 
respondence with  her  husband,  and 
was  always  the  cheerful,  genial,  saga- 
cious wife  and  counsellor. 

Writing  to  his  wife,  in  February, 
1794,  Adams  said :  "  You  apologize  for 
the  length  of  your  letters,  and  I  ought 
to  excuse  the  shortness  and  emptiness 
of  mine.  Yours  give  me  more  enter- 
tainment than  all  the  speeches  I  hear. 
There  are  more  good  thoughts,  fine 
strokes,  and  mother  wit  in  them  than 
I  hear  in  the  whole  week.  An  ounce 
of  mother  wit  is  worth  a  pound  ol 
clergy;  and  I  rejoice  that  one  of  my 
children,  at  least,  has  an  abundance  of 
not  only  mother  wit,  but  of  his  moth 
er's  wit.  It  is  one  of  the  most  amia 
ble  and  striking  traits  in  his  composi- 
tion. If  the  rogue  has  any  family 
pride,  it  is  all  derived  from  the  same 
source."  To  this  Mrs.  Adams  replied, 
in  a  like  genial  strain :  "  You  say  so 
many  handsome  things  to  me,  respect- 
ing my  letters  that  you  ought  to  fear 
making  me  vain ;  since,  however,  we 
may  appreciate  the  encomiums  of  the 
world,  the  praises  of  those  whom  we 
love  and  esteem  are  more  dangerous, 
because  we  are  led  to  believe  them  the 
most  sincere." 

John  Adams  having  been  elected 
successor  of  Washington  in  the  first 
and  highest  office  in  the  country's  gift, 
his  wife  wrote  to  him  in  terms  of  so 
great  womanly  dignity  and  appreci- 
ativeness,  that  we  give  her  letter  in 
full.  It  was  dated  at  Quincy,  Febru- 
ary 8th, 1797: 

"  The  sun  is  dressed  in  brightest  beams, 
To  give  honor  to  the  day. 

"And  may  it  prove  an  auspicious 


260 


ABIGAIL  ADAMS. 


prelude  to  each  ensuing  season.  You 
ha  ye  this  day  to  declare  yourself  head 
of  a  nation.  *  And  now,  O  Lord,  my 
God,  thou  hast  made  thy  servant  ruler 
over  the  people.  Give  unto  him  an 
understanding  heart,  that  he  may  know 
how  to  go  out  and  come  in  before  this 
great  people ;  that  he  may  discern  be- 
tween good  and  bad.  For  who  is  able 
to  judge  this,  thy  so  great  a  people  ? ' 
were  the  words  of  a  royal  sovereign  ; 
and  not  less  applicable  to  him  who  is 
invested  with  the  chief  magistracy  of  a 
nation,  though  he  wears  not  the  crown 
nor  the  robes  of  royalty. 

"  My  thoughts  and  my  meditations 
are  with  you,  though  personally  ab- 
Bent ;  and  my  petitions  to  Heaven  are 
that '  the  things  which  make  for  peace 
may  not  be  hidden  from  your  eyes.' 
My  feelings  are  not  those  of  pride  or 
ostentation  upon  the  occasion.  They 
are  solemnized  by  a  sense  of  the  obli- 
gations, the  important  trusts  and  nu- 
merous duties  connected  with  it.  That 
you  may  be  enabled  to  discharge  them 
with  honor  to  yourself,  with  justice 
and  impartiality  to  your  country,  and 
with  satisfaction  to  this  great  people, 
shall  be  the  daily  prayer  of  your 

"A.  A." 

During  the  somewhat  tempestuous 
administration  of  the  second  president, 
Mrs.  Adams  was  called  upon  to  exer- 
cise all  her  admirable  powers  in  sooth- 
ing, quieting,  encouraging  her  husband, 
and  in  moderating  and  in  a  measure  dis- 
arming the  violence  of  political  parti- 
zanship  and  struggles.  Her  health  suf- 
fered materially  in  the  early  part  of 
Adams's  administration,  and  for  a  lono- 

7  o 

time  she  lay  stretched  on  the  bed  of 
Illness,  nickering  between  life  and 


death,  at  her  home  in  Massachusetts. 
Her  recovery  was  slow,  and  her  health 
remained  but  delicate  thenceforward. 
Her  husband's  allusions  to  this  dis 
tressing  part  of  his  trials  are  frequent 
and  touching:  "Your  sickness  last 
I  summer,  fall,  and  winter,  has  been  to 
me  the  severest  trial  I  ever  endured.'* 
"  Oh,  how  they  lament  Mrs.  Adams's 
absence !  She  is  a  good  counsellor ! " 
In  the  summer  of  the  year  1800,  by 
direction  of  President  Adams,  the  pub- 
lie  offices;  papers,  etc.,  were  removed  to 
the  new  federal  city  on  the  banks  of 
the  Potomac,  where  Congress  was  to 
hold  its  next  session,  on  the  third  Mon- 
day of  November.  In  this  connection, 
Mrs.  Adams's  letter  to  her  daughter 
may  aptly  be  quoted,  giving,  as  it 
does,  a  graphic  description  of  the  city 
of  Washington  in  the  days  of  its  in- 
fancy. The  letter  was  written  in  No- 
vember, 1800.  "I  arrived  here,"  she 
says,  "on  Sunday  last,  and  without 
meeting  any  accident  worth  noticing, 
except  losing  ourselves  when  we  It  lit 
Baltimore,  and  going  eight  or  nine 
miles  on  the  Frederick  Road,  by  which 
means  we  were  obliged  to  <?o  the  other 

o  o 

eight  through  the  woods,  Avhere  we 
wandered  two  hours  without  finding 

o 

a  guide  or  the  path.  Fortunately  a 
straggling  black  came  up  with  us,  and 
we  engaged  him  as  a  guide  to  extricate 
us  out  of  our  difficulty  ;  but  woods  are 
all  you  see,  from  Baltimore,  until  you 
reach  the  cityt — which  is  only  so  iu 
name.  Here  and  there  is  a  small  cot, 
without  a  glass  window,  interspersed 
among  the  forests,  through  which  you 
travel  miles  without  seeing  any  human 
being." 

Her  account  of  the  president's  oifi 


ABIGAIL   ADAMS. 


261 


cial  residence  is  equally  entertaining. 
"  The  house  is  upon  a  grand  and  su- 
perb scale,  requiring  about  thirty  ser- 
vants to  attend  and  keep  the  apart- 
ments in  proper  order,  and  perform 
the  ordinary  business  of  the  house  and 
stables,  an  establishment  very  well 
proportioned  to  the  president's  salary ! 
The  lighting  the  apartments,  from  the 
kitchen  to  parlors  and  chambers,  is  a 
tax  indeed !  and  the  fires  we  are  obliged 
to  keep,  to  secure  us  from  daily  agues, 
is  another  cheering  comfort ! 

"  If  they  will  put  me  up  some  bells, 
(there  is  not  one  hung  in  the  whole 
house,  and  promises  are  all  you  can  ob- 
tain !)  and  let  me  have  wood  enough 
to  keep  fires,  I  design  to  be  pleased. 
I  could  content  myself  almost  any- 
where three  months ;  but,  surrounded 
with  forests,  can  you  believe  that 
wood  is  not  to  be  had  ? — because  peo- 
ple cannot  be  found  to  cut  and  cart  it ! 
Briesler  entered  into  a  contract  with  a 
man  to  supply  him  with  wood ;  a  small 
part  (a  few  cords)  only  has  he  been 
able  to  get.  Most  of  that  was  ex- 
pended to  dry  the  walls  of  the  house 
before  we  came  in ;  and  yesterday  the 
man  told  him  it  was  impossible  to  pro- 
cure it  to  be  cut  and  carted.  He  has 
had  recourse  to  coals ;  but  we  cannot 
get  grates  made  and  set.  We  have 
come  indeed  into  a  'new  country.' 
The  house  is  made  habitable,  but  there 
is  not  a  single  apartment  finished,  and 
all  withinside,  except  the  plastering, 
has  been  done  since  Briesler  came. 
We  have  not  the  least  fence,  yard,  or 
other  convenience  without,  and  the 
great  unfinished  audience-room  I  make 
a  drying-room  of,  to  hang  up  the 
clothes  in.  The  principal  stairs  are 


not  up,  and  will  not  be  this  winter 
Six  chambers  are  made  comfortable; 
two  are  occupied  by  the  president  and 
Mr.  Shaw;  two  lower  rooms,  one  for 
a  common  parlor,  and  one  for  a  levee 
room.  Up-stairs  there  is  the  oval 
room,  which  is  designed  for  the  draw 
ing-room,  and  has  the  crimson  furni 
ture  in  it.  It  is  a  very  handsoma 
room  now;  but  when  completed,  it 
will  be  beautiful." 

There  was  not,  certainly,  much  of 
the  pomp  of  royalty  in  such  an  official 
residence  as  this :  and  Jefferson  and 
other  captious  critics  might  have  dis- 
covered many  wiser  reasons  than  those 
which  were  suggested,  for  Adams's 
manifest  reluctance  to  take  up  his 
abode,  for  a  few  months,  in  a  house 
which  was  accessible  by  little  better 
than  a  "  blazed  track,"  and  where  there 
was  no  fuel  to  be  had,  nor  a  bell  hung 
and  not  even  a  yard  for  the  president's 
wife  "  to  hang  up  the  clothes  in  "  to 
be  dried.  Domestic  trials  and  trib. 
ulations,  however,  like  every  thing  else 
in  this  world,  come  to  an  end  in  due 
time.  In  this  case,  only  a  few  months 
sufficed,  and  in  the  latter  part  of  Feb- 
ruary, 1801,  Mrs.  Adams  returned  to 
her  home  at  Quincy,  never  to  leave 
it  again.  The  retiring  president  was 
chagrined  and  vexed  to  such  a  degree  by 
the  result  of  the  fierce  political  strug- 
gle, which  placed  Thomas  Jefferson  in 
the  presidential  chair,  that  he  could 
not  bring  himself  to  remain  in  Wash 
ington  long  enough  to  see  his  astute 
rival  safely  seated,  on  the  4th  of  March, 
in  the  coveted  post  of  honor.  Hence 
he  hurried  his  family  away,  and  settled 
down  at  Quincy,  in  close  seclusion 
and  almost  obscurity. 


ABIGAIL  ADAMS. 


Mrs.  Adams  was  now  approaching 
three  score  years,  and  having  served 
her  country  well,  and  having  dischar- 
ged for  many  years  the  duties  of  her 
station,  with  a  faithfulness  worthy 
of  all  praise,  she  was  well  satisfied 
to  retire  into  this  heaven  of  rest, 
and  spend  the  remainder  of  her 
life  in  the  quiet,  unobtrusive  duties 
of  home.  There  was  no  mur- 
muring or  complaining  on  her  part,  no 
longing  for  high  position  or  gay  so- 
ciety, of  which  she  had  had  so  large 
experience ;  she  was  at  peace  with  the 
world,  and  without  ambition  ever  to 
enter  into  its  busy  occupations  again. 

Her  eldest  son,  John  Quincy 
Adams,  returned  home  after  eight 
years'  diplomatic  service  abroad,  and 
became  Secretary  of  State  under  Pres- 
ident Monroe.  It  was,  no  doubt,  a 
great  gratification  to  his  mother  as 
well  as  father,  to  have  a  son  whose  up- 
rightness of  character,  and  abilities  as 
a  statesman,  were  fully  and  freely  rec- 
ognized ;  and  had  her  life  been  spared 
but  a  few  years  longer,  she  would 
have  seen  that  son  elevated  to  the 
same  high  position  which  his  father 
once  filled.  But  it  was  not  so  to  be. 
Mrs.  Adams  was  spared  to  live  beyond 
the  three-score  years  and  ten  of  mor- 


tal existence,  and  the  summons  of  de 
parture  came  in  a  good  old  age. 

This  was  the  severest  affliction  which 
had  ever  befallen  John  Adams.  "  Hia 
wife,  who  had  gone  through  the  vicis- 
situdes of  more  than  half  a  century 
in  his  company ;  who  had  sympa- 
thized with  him  in  all  his  aspirations, 
and  had  cheered  him  in  his  greatest 
trials;  who  had  faithfully  preserved 
his  worldly  interests,  when  he  was 
unable  to  be  present  to  guard  them 
himself;  who  had  enlivened  his  home 
and  had  shared  his  joys  and  his  pains 
alike,  was  taken  ill  with  a  typhus  fever 
in  the  autumn  of  1818,  and  died  on 
the  28th  of  October.  He  was  at  this 
time  eighty-three  years  of  age,  and  of 
course  had  little  reason  to  expect  long 
to  survive  her;  but  to  him  her  loss 
was  a  perpetually  recurring  evil ;  for 
she  had  been  the  stay  of  his  house- 
hold. Her  character  had  adapted  it 
self  to  his  in  such  a  manner  as  to  im 
prove  the  good  qualities  of  both,  so 
that  her  loss  threw  over  his  manner 
ever  afterwards  a  tinge  of  sadness  not 
natural  to  him ;  and  the  sprightly  hu- 
mor, which  made  so  agreeable  a  part 
of  the  letters  addressed  to  her  in  her 
lifetime,  as  it  did  of  his  daily  conver 
sation,  ceased  in  a  degree  to  appear."' 


•final  pava. 


GILBEKT-MOTIEK  DE  LAFAYETTE. 


2(55 


of  Loner  Island,  and  its  disastrous  se- 

o  / 

quel  of  events,  came  to  hand  to  dash 
all  hopes  and  interrupt  the  expected 
succors.  Lafayette,  however,  was  not 
to  be  turned  from  his  project.  The 
more  need,  thought  he,  so  much  the 
more  honor.  He  resolved  to  purchase 
a  ship  at  his  own  expense,  and  proceed 
in  it,  with  his  companions  and  supplies, 
to  America.  Even  the  prudence  of 
Franklin  could  offer  nothing  in  resist- 
ance to  a  proposition  of  this  generous 
character.  The  measures  of  Lafayette 
were  accordingly  taken  to  procure  the 
requisite  vessel  at  Bordeaux.  In  the 
meantime,  to  obviate  suspicion,  and 
fulfil  an  engagement  with  his  friend, 
the  Prince  de  Poix,  he  made  a  brief 
tour  of  three  weeks  to  London,  where 
his  uncle,  the  Marquis  de  Noailles,  held 
the  post  of  French  ambassador.  The 
journey  was  made  with  no  reference  to 
obtaining  information  of  the  English 
plans  or  resources  in  their  war  with 
the  colonies;  on  the  contrary,  the 
chivalrous  Lafayette  declined  to  take 
advantage  of  opportunities  of  the  kind 
which  lay  in  his  way.  He  made  no 
secret  of  his  liberal  views,  and  rejoiced 
at  the  news  of  the  success  at  Trenton, 
and  had  the  honor  of  an  invitation  to 
breakfast,  in  recognition  of  his  opin- 
ions, from  Lord  Shelburne,  a  distin- 
guished member  of  the  opposition.  He 
returned  hurriedly  to  the  French  cap- 
ital, concealed  himself  at  Chaillot,  saw 
only  a  few  friends,  and,  in  a  few  days, 
Bet  out  for  Bordeaux,  where  he  found 
his  vessel  not  quite  ready.  The  court, 
meanwhile,  as  he  became  aware,  had 
learnt  of  his  intended  departure,  and 
fearing  interruption,  he  sailed  to  the 
neighboring  Spanish  port  of  Passage. 
34 


The  whole  court,  the  English  minister 
and  his  family,  were  loud  in  their  out- 
cries at  this  discovery.  He  was  re- 
called by  a  lettre  de  cachet  from  the 
king,  and  he  accompanied  the  officers 
to  Bordeaux.  His  family  was  urgent 
that  he  should  join  them  in  a  tour  to 
Italy.  Seeming  to  consent  to  this  ar- 
rangement, lie  declared  his  intention 
to  proceed  to  Marseilles,  and  was  suf- 
fered to  depart.  He  had  scarcely  left 
the  city,  however,  when  he  disguised 
himself  as  a  courier,  and  hastened, 
with  his  companion,  an  officer  named 
Mauroy,  also  bent  on  an  American 
campaign,  towards  the  Spanish  fron- 
tier. At  Bayonne,  Lafayette,  to  pre- 
serve his  concealment,  rested  on  straw 
in  a  stable.  At  St.  Jean  de  Luz,  a  lit- 
tle village  on  their  course,  he  was  re- 
cognized by  a  young  girl,  the  daughtei 
of  the  keeper  of  the  post-house.  A 
timely  sign  from  him  induced  her  to 
keep  silence,  and,  by  her  false  inform 
ation,  perplex  his  pursuers  in  the  chase. 
He  reached  Passage,  and  in  company 
with  Baron  de  Kalb,  and  other  officers 
for  the  service,  was  borne  safely  to  sea. 
The  papers  of  the  vessel  were  taken 
out  for  the  West  Indies,  and  her  cap- 
tain  had  some  reluctance,  on  approach- 
ing the  American  coast,  to  turn  from 
his  course.  Lafayette  insisted  on  hia 
landing  him  on  the  main  land  by  urg- 
ing his  ownership  of  the  vessel,  and 
finally,  on  learning  the  secret  of  the 
captain's  reluctance,  in  his  hesitation 
to  risk  an  important  venture  of  his 
own  on  board,  pledged  his  private  for- 
tune to  make  all  losses  good.  The 
ship  was  then  steered  for  the  coast  of 
South  Carolina,  where,  running  the 
gauntlet  of  the  British  cruisers,  a  land 


266 


GILBERT-MOTIEE  DE  LAFAYETTE. 


ing  was  happily  effected  at  the  harbor 
of  Georgetown.  Ascending  the  river 
m  a  "boat,  Lafayette,  with  some  of  his 
officers,  alighted  in  the  night  near  the 
residence  of  Major  Benjamin  Huger, 
where,  upon  making  themselves  known, 
they  were  received  with  warm-hearted 
hospitality.  During  the  voyage,  La- 
fayette had  penned  an  affectionate 
epistle  to  his  wife,  whom  he  had  left 
about,  a  second  time,  to  become  a 
mother;  he  now  added  to  it  a  post- 
script, announcing  his  arrival,  which 
message  was  just  in  time  to  be  sent 
home  by  a  vessel  leaving  for  France. 
His  epistle  is  dated  June  15, 1777,  and 
records  his  first  impressions.  "  The 
manners,"  says  he,  "  in  this  part  of  the 
world  are  simple,  polite,  and  worthy  in 
every  respect  of  the  country  in  which 
the  noble  name  of  liberty  is  constant- 
ly repeated."  A  few  days  later,  at 
Charleston,  in  another  letter,  he  re- 
peats his  satisfaction  with  the  equality, 
kindness,  love  of  country,  which  every- 
where prevail.  All  is  charming  to  his 
eyes.  The  absence  of  poverty,  the 
neatness  and  ease  of  manners  of  the 
ladies,  particularly  strike  him.  It  is  a 
political  Arcadia,  with  which  the  Pa- 
risians, in  those  days,  were  delighted, 
but  which  they  found  it  very  difficult 
to  imitate. 

Shortly  after,  the  party  left  Charles- 
ton for  the  North,  travelling  on  horse- 
back, through  North  Carolina  and  Vir- 
ginia. Arrived  at  the  seat  of  govern- 
ment, at  Philadelphia,  where  Congress 
was  then  in  session,  Lafayette  placed 
his  letters  in  the  hands  of  Mr.  Lovell, 
of  Massachusetts,  Chairman  of  the 
Committee  on  Foreign  Affairs.  Upon 
waiting  on  that  gentleman  the  next 


day,  he  was  informed  that  such  waa 
the  crowd  of  foreign  applicants  for  em 
ployment  in  the  army,  and  such  the 
state  of  the  national  finances,  that  there 
was  little  hope  of  his  request  being 
regarded.  Upon  this,  not  at  all  dis- 
concerted, he  sat  down  and  addressed 
a  note  to  Congress,  in  which  he  claim- 
ed the  right,  after  the  sacrifices  he  had 
made,  to  serve  on  two  ver^  simple  con- 
ditions— to  be  at  his  own  expense,  and 
to  engage  first  as  a  volunteer.  This 
direct  as  well  as  reasonable  petition 
caused  immediate  attention  to  his  let 
ters.  They  were  read  at  once,  and, 
on  the  instant,  the  following  reso- 
lution was  passed :  "  Whereas,  the 
Marquis  de  Lafayette,  out  of  his  great 
zeal  to  the  cause  of  liberty,  in  which 
the  United  States  are  engaged,  has  left 
his  family  and  connections,  and  at  his 
own  expense  come  over  to  offer  his  ser- 
vices to  the  United  States,  without 
pension  or  particular  allowance,  and  is 
anxious  to  risk  his  life  in  our  cause ; 
resolved,  that  his  service  be  accepted, 
and  that,  in  consideration  of  his  zeal, 
his  illustrious  family  and  connections, 
he  have  the  rank  of  Major  General  in 
the  army  of  the  United  States.1'  This 
resolution,  conferring  this  high  rank 
on  a  youth  of  nineteen,  was  adopted 
July  31st,  1777. 

Washington  being  expected  shortly 
in  the  city  from  the  camp,  Lafayette 
awaited  his  arrival.  Their  first  meet- 
ing was  at  a  dinner-party,  at  the  close 
of  which  Washington,  who  was  favor- 
ably impressed  at  the  outset  with  the 
new  guest  of  the  nation,  took  him 
aside,  complimented  him  on  the  ardor 
he  had  shown  and  the  sacrifices  he  had 
made,  and  ended  by  inviting  him  to 


GILBEET-MOTIER  DE  LAFAYETTE. 


267 


make  the  head-quarters  of  the  army  his 
home,  and  consider  himself  a  member 
of  his  family.  It  was  the  beginning 
of  a  life-loAg  intimacy,  a  friendship 
which  Washington  bequeathed  to  the 
nation. 

In  a  review  of  the  troops,  which  took 
place  not  long  after,  at  which  Lafayette 
was  present,  Washington  remarked, 
"  We  must  feel  embarrassed  to  exhibit 
ourselves  before  an  officer  who  has  just 
quitted  French  troops."  "  It  is  to  learn, 
and  not  to  teach,  that  I  come  hither," 
was  the  modest  reply.  Lafayette  was 
with  the  army  as  a  volunteer,  till  the 
month  of  September,  when  he  took 
part  in  the  battle  of  Brandywine.  He 
was  in  the  thickest  perils  of  that  en- 
gagement, in  the  centre  of  the  com- 
mand of  General  Sullivan,  which  was 
exposed  to  the  fiercest  onset  of  Corn- 
wallis.  Seeing  the  ranks  broken,  he 
dismounted  from  his  horse,  and  sought 
to  rally  the  flying  troops.  While  thus 
engaged,  a  musket  ball  passed  through 
his  leg,  happily  without  touching  the 
bone.  In  his  excitement,  he  did  not 
perceive  the  wound,  till  his  aid  called 
his  attention  to  the  blood  running  from 
his  boot.  He  then  mounted  his  horse ; 
his  wound  was  bandaged  by  a  surgeon, 
and  he  rode  to  Chester,  where  he  was 
cared  for,  and  the  next  day  taken  to 
Philadelphia.  Thence  he  passed  to 
Bristol,  where  he  was  met  by  Mr. 
Henry  Laurens,  who,  happening  to  go 
through  the  place  on  the  adjournment 
of  Congress,  conveyed  him  in  his  car- 
riage to  the  happy  settlement  of  the 
Moravians,  at  Bethlehem,  at  whose 
quiet  retreat  he  passed  two  months, 
waiting  for  the  healing  of  his  wound. 

The  peaceful  influences  at  Bethle- 


hem, however,  did  not  turn  his  atten 
tion  from  the  thoughts  of  war.  He, 
on  the  contrary,  employed  his  leisure 
in  sending  communications  to  the 
French  governor  at  Martinique,  urg- 
ing an  attack  upon  the  British  islands, 
under  American  colors,  and  wrote,  be- 
side, to  M.  de  Maurepas,  advising  an 
attack  on  the  English  factories  of  the 
East  Indies.  The  old  minister  thought 
the  latter  a  good  project,  though  he 
declined  it  as  inexpedient. 

The  young  soldier,  chafing  in  his  con- 
finement, had  but  imperfectly  recover- 
ed from  his  wound,  when  he  joined  the 
cainp,and  accompanied  General  Greene, 
as  a  volunteer,  into  New  Jersey. 
Though  gifted  with  the  title  of  Major 
General,  he,  as  yet,  had  no  separate 
command.  He  was,  however,  eager  for 
the  fight,  and  with  juvenile  impetuosi- 
ty, sought  every  opportunity  for  ac- 
tion. This  was  shown  in  a  spirited 
affair  which  he  conducted  while  lead- 
ing a  reconnoitering  party  of  Greene's 
troops  in  November,  to  the  neighbor- 
hood of  the  Delaware,  where  he  was  in 
danger  of  being  cut  off;  he  escaped, 
however,  and  had  a  very  pretty  conflict 
with  a  strong  Hessian  outpost  of  the 
enemy,  which  he  alighted  upon,  in- 
flicting serious  loss,  and  taking  some 
twenty  prisoners.  His  exhilaration  in 
this  encounter  is  indicated  in  his  letter 
to  Washington  describing  the  engage  • 
ment.  "  I  never  saw  men,"  he  wrote, 
"  so  merry,  so  spirited,  and  so  desirous 
to  go  on  to  the  enemy,  whatever  force 
they  might  have,  as  that  small  party  in 
this  little  fight."  General  Greene  wrote 
to  Washington,  "  The  Marquis  is  deter- 
mined to  be  in  the  way  of  danger.'' 
In  communicating  the  intelligence  tc 


£68 


GILBERT-MOTIEK  DE  LAFAYETTE. 


Congress,  "Washington  urged  some  pro- 
vision for  the  military  employment  of 
his  friend.  "  I  am  convinced,"  he  wrote, 
"he  possesses  a  large  share  of  that 
military  ardor  which  generally  char- 
acterizes the  nobility  of  his  country." 
Congress  upon  this  seconded  the  re- 
commendation, and  he  was  accordingly 
given  the  command  of  the  division, 
mostly  of  Virginians,  vacated  by  the 
removal  of  General  Stephens. 

The  winter  quarters  of  the  army  that 
year  were  at  Valley  Forge,  and  there 
Lafayette  shared  the  councils,  and  par- 
took of  the  anxieties  of  Washington. 
He  has  left  us  a  piteous  account  of  the 
condition  of  the  unfurnished  troops  in 
that  inclement  season,  of  their  need  and 
their  sufferings,  and  has  told  us  how 
"  he  adopted  in  every  respect  the 
American  dress,  habits  and  food,  wish- 
ing to  be  more  simple,  frugal  and 
austere  than  the  Americans  them- 
selves." It  was  the  period,  too,  of 
those  machinations  in  Congress,  grow- 
ing out  of  disaffection  to  Washington, 
which  threatened  at  the  moment  great- 
ly to  impair  the  efficiency  of  the  army. 
Gates,  flushed  with  his  victory  at  Sara- 
toga, was  set  up  at  the  head  of  the 
newly  constituted  Board  of  War,  and 
it  became  the  fashion  with  a  certain 
class  to  praise  him  at  the  expense  of 
the  commander-in-chief.  In  the  course 
of  this  intrigue,  it  was  attempted  to 
embroil  Lafayette,  by  diverting  him 
from  Washington,  to  the  separate  com- 
mand of  an  expedition,  planned  in 
Congress,  against  Canada.  The  scheme 
was  concocted  by  Gates  and  his  friends, 
without  consulting  the  commander-in- 
chief,  who  did  not  hear  of  it  until  La- 
fayette was  informed  of  his  appoint- 


ment. A  formal  letter,  asking  his  ad 
vice,  was  then  sent  to  Washington, 
who  wished  the  affair  success,  and  en 
couraged  Lafayette,  of  whose  fidelity 
he  was  assured,  to  undertake  it.  The 
conspirators  had  caught  a  Tartar  in 
the  French  marquis,  whom  they  had 
fancied  a  showy  head  for  the  expedi- 
tion, with  the  real  authority  in  the 
hands  of  their  tool,  Conway,  who  was 
to  be  second  in  command. 

Lafayette,  however,  appointed  his 
friend,  Baron  de  Kalb,  to  the  expedi- 
tion, whose  commission,  being  of  an 
older  date,  superseded  Conway.  Hav- 
ing arranged  this  and  other  stipula- 
tions, the  Marquis  set  out  on  his  wintry 
journey,  in  February,  to  the  rendez- 
vous at  Albany.  The  prospect  was  not 
very  cheering,  if  we  may  judge  from 
his  letter,  written  on  the  way,  to  Wash- 
ington. "I  go  on  slowly,"  he  says, 
"  sometimes  drenched  with  rain,  some- 
times covered  with  snow,  and  not  en 
tertaining  many  handsome  thoughts 
about  the  projected  incursion  into 
Canada.  Lake  Champlain  is  too  cold 
to  produce  one  sprig  of  laurel ;  and,  if 
I  am  not  starved,  I  shall  be  as  proud 
as  if  I  had  gained  three  battles."  The 
prospect  was  not  at  all  improved  at  Al- 
bany. Men  and  equipments  were  alike 
wanting.  In  fact,  the  whole  enterprise, 
greatly  to  the  mortification  of  the  Mar- 
quis, was  abandoned.  He  expressed 
his  fears  of  the  ridicule  which  might 
attach  to  such  a  fruitless  undertaking, 
frankly  to  Washington,  but  the  latter 
chose  to  see  in  it  at  least  an  honorable 
appointment,  and  consoled  his  anxious 
young  friend  accordingly.  The  Mar- 
quis returned  with  De  Kalb  to  Valley 
Forge,  where,  in  the  month  of  May 


GILBERT-MOTIEU  DE  LAFAFETTE. 


269 


they  had  the  satisfaction  of  finding 
fcheir  "winter  of  discontent"  turned 
into  l<  glorious  summer  "  by  the  news 
of  the  French  alliance,  which  was  cel- 
ebrated at  the  camp  with  unusual  fer- 
vor, in  consequence  of  the  presence  of 
Lafayette. 

A  few  days  after  this  festivity,  the 
Marquis  was  sent  forward  with  a  con- 
siderable detachment  of  the  army  to  a 
position  midway  between  the  camp 
and  the  British  at  Philadelphia.  He 
was  thus  stationed  at  Barren  Hill,  on 
the  Schuylkill,  when  Clinton  planned 
an  expedition,  in  three  divisions,  to 
surround  and  capture  him;  and  the 
plan  at  one  moment  promised  to  be 
successful,  when  Lafayette,  by  an  adroit 
movement,  relieved  his  force  from  its 
perils  by  a  masterly  retreat.  The  Brit- 
ish withdrew  from  Philadelphia  not 
long  after,  and  were  intercepted  on 
the  march  to  New  York  by  the  battle 
of  Monmouth.  The  command  of  the 
advance,  in  the  movements  preceding 
this  engagement,  was,  on  Lee's  declin- 
ing it,  given  to  Lafayette,  who  yielded 
it  again  when  that  eccentric  officer  re- 
pented of  his  indecision  and  claimed  it. 
When  the  armies  were  brought  to- 
gether, Lafayette  bore  his  part  in  the 
affairs  of  the  day  in  his  command  of 
the  second  line.  The  next  incident  of 
his  military  career  was  his  employment 
in  Rhode  Island,  under  the  command 
of  General  Sullivan,  where  he  was  en- 
gaged in  important  conferences  with 
the  French  fleet  of  the  Count  d'Estaing, 
and  subsequently  at  Boston,  urging  his 
countrymen  to  action,  and,  when  the 
opportunity  had  gone  by,  reconciling 
Mie  animosities  which  grew  out  of  the 
neglect.  At  the  end  of  the  campaign, 


considering  it  to  be  his  duty  to  offer 
his  services  to  his  country  in  the  war 
which  had  broken  out  between  that 
nation  and  England,  he  requested  from 
Congress  leave  of  absence  to  return  to 
France,  which  was  granted,  with  thanks 
and  the  compliment  of  decreeing  him  a 
sword  for  his  many  services.  He  car- 
ried, moreover,  an  extraordinary  letter 
of  recommendation  addressed  by  Con- 
gress to  the  King  of  France. 

On  his  way  to  Boston,  to  sail  in  the 
frigate  Alliance,  he  was  detained  by 
serious  illness  at  Fishkill.  The  deten 
tion,  however,  was  alleviated  by  the 
care  and  visits  of  "Washington,  and  ear- 
ly in  January,  1779,  he  was  enabled 
to  embark.  After  a  rough  voyage, 
aggravated  by  an  attempt  at  mutiny 
on  the  part  of  some  British  prisoners 
shipped  with  the  crew,  the  Alliance 
entered  Brest.  In  France,  an  enthusi- 
astic reception  awaited  him.  After  a 
few  days'  formal  expiation  of  his  pre 
vious  neglect  of  the  royal  mandates,  in 
retirement,  he  was  everywhere  received 
with  triumph.  He  did  not,  we  may 
be  sure,  neglect  the  interests  of  Ame- 
rica in  this  season  of  favor,  but  turned 
his  influence  to  account  in  promoting 
her  fortunes.  He  was  mainly  instru- 
mental in  forwarding  the  army  of 
Rochambeau,  and  so  great  was  his 
eagerness  in  pushing  his  applications 
for  men  and  money,  that  the  venerable 
Count  de  Maurepas  said  that  to  clothe 
the  army  he  would  willingly  unf  tirnish 
the  palace  of  Versailles.  The  remark 
had  a  flavor  of  prophecy  in  it  unsus- 
pected b/  the  old  minister. 

The  cause  of  America  being  thus 
strengthened  by  his  services  abroad, 
he  returned  to  take  part  again  in  its 


5470 


GILBERT-HOTTER  DE  LAFAYETTE. 


conflicts,  after  only  a  few  months'  ab- 
sence. He  was  landed  in  Boston  by  a 
French  frigate,  in  April,  and  became 
immediately  engaged  in  adjusting  the 
reception  and  employment  of  the  new 
troops  from  his  country.  It  was  while 
thus  occupied  with  Washington  in  a 
journey  to  meet  Rochambeau,  that  the 
treason  of  Arnold  occurred ;  and  at  the 
subsequent  trial  of  Andre,  Lafayette  sat 
as  one  of  the  board  of  general  officers 
which  composed  the  court.  When  Ar- 
nold made  his  appearance  in  Virginia, 
Lafayette  was  sent  to  co-operate  with 
Steuben  and  the  expected  French  fleet 
to  cheek  his  incursion.  The  movement, 
in  consequence  of  the  non-arrival  of  the 
ships,  which  had  been  damaged  in  an 
encounter  with  the  British,  proved  un- 
successful, but  it  was  renewed  with 
better  resources  and  success  on  the  ap- 
proach, from  the  South,  of  Cornwallis. 
On  this  last  occasion,  to  fit  out  his 
troops  in  Maryland,  Lafayette  raised 
two  thousand  guineas  on  his  own  credit 
at  Baltimore.  He  was  at  this  time  en- 
abled to  offer  important  protection  to 
Richmond,  and  shortly  after  to  take 
part  in  the  movements  which  hemmed 
Cornwallis  in  at  Yorktown — an  efficient 
reply  to  the  boast  of  the  British  gene- 
ral shortly  before,  in  a  letter  to  Clin- 
ton, "  The  boy  cannot  escape  me."  In 
the  operations  of  the  siege,  Lafayette 
commanded  the  detachment  of  light 
infantry  in  the  attack  upon  the  re- 
doubt, in  which  Colonel  Hamilton  so 
gallantly  led  the  advance. 

The  active  operations  of  the  war 
being  now  virtually  at  an  end,  Lafay- 
ette, a  second  time,  requested  leave  of 
absence,  to  visit  his  family  in  Europe. 
Congress  acceded  to  his  wish,  with 


even  more  than  the  previous  compli 
ments.  enjoining  the  Secretary  of  State 
to  direct  the  foreign  ministers  of  the 
country  on  the  continent  of  Europe,  to 
confer  with  him  in  reference  to  theii 
movements.  His  majesty,  Louis  XVI., 
was  so  pleased  with  his  participation  in 
the  Virginia  conipaign,  that  he  raised 
him  to  the  rank  of  field-marshal  in  the 
French  service.  On  this  visit  to  France 
he  was  again  active  in  promoting  the 
interests  of  America,  and  was  speeding 
on  the  equipment  of  a  huge  fleet,  to  be 
commanded  by  the  Count  d'Estaing, 
carrying  a  land  force,  of  which  he  was 
to  take  the  command,  being  already  at 
the  rendezvous,  at  Cadiz,  when  a  gen- 
eral treaty  of  peace  was  signed  at 
Paris.  The  first  news  of  this  event 
was  forwarded  to  Congress  by  General 
Lafayette  himself,  in  a  letter  dated 
Cadiz,  February  5th,  1783.  "I  am  noi 
without  hopes,"  he  wrote,  when  the 
French  admiral  had,  at  his  request,  as- 
signed a  vessel,  the  Triumph,  to  carry 
the  message,  "  of  giving  Congress  the 
first  tidings  of  a  general  peace ;  and  I 
am  happy  in  the  smallest  opportunity 
of  doing  anything  that  may  prove 
agreeable  to  America."  He  would 
have  brought  the  news  in  person,  had 
he  not  been  called  to  Madrid  to  rendei 
an  important  service  to  the  American 
minister  at  that  capital. 

The  next  year,  1784,  he  came  to 
America  for  the  third  time,  landing  at 
New  York  on  the  4th  of  August.  His 
arrival  had  been  looked  for,  and  Wash- 
ington, in  the  spring,  had  written  to 
him,  urging  him  to  bring  Madame  La- 
fayette with  him.  Indeed,  the  warm- 
est gallantry  of  Washington's  heart 
was  poured  forth  in  an  epistle  to  the 


G1LBERT-MOTIEE  DE  LAFAYETTE. 


271 


lady  herself.  Lafayette,  notwithstand- 
ing this  pressing  invitation,  came  alone. 
But  he  hastened,  immediately  upon  his 
arri  val,  to  Mount  Vernon,  where  he  en- 
joyed twelve  days  of  such  welcome  as 
it  is  rarely  the  lot  of  man  to  receive, 
at  the  end  of  which  a  brilliant  public 
reception  afc  Baltimore  awaited  him. 
Thence  his  journey  was  continued  to 
New  York,  and  by  the  Hudson  River 
to  Albany,  whence  he  accompanied  the 
commissioners  about  to  execute  a  treaty 
with  the  Mohawks  and  Senecas  at  Fort 
Schuyler.  He  was  a  favorite  with  the 
Indians  of  Western  New  York,  whom 
he  had  addressed  in  council  in  1778, 
when  he  was  engaged  in  the  ill-planned 
expedition  of  Gates  to  Canada.  They 
had  a  certain  sympathy  with  him,  as  a 
representative  of  the  old  French  race 
to  which  they  had  been  allied. 

From  New  York  Lafayette  journey- 
ed through  the  New  England  States, 
embarking  at  Boston,  in  the  French 
frigate  Nymphe,  for  the  Chesapeake. 
He  was  landed  at  Yorktown,  and  visit- 
ed Willianisburg  and  Richmond,  where 
the  legislature,  then  richly  composed 
of  the  elder  worthies  of  the  State, 
gave  him  a  public  reception.  "Wash- 
ington, also,  was  there  to  meet  him, 
and  the  two  friends  journeyed  together 
to  Mount  Vernon.  After  a  week's  rest 
at  this  hospitable  mansion,  he  was  ac- 
companied by  Washington  to  Annap- 
olis, where  these  eminent  men,  who 
entertained  so  strong  a  regard  for  one 
another,  parted,  never  to  meet  again. 
At  Trenton,  Lafayette  was  welcomed 
by  the  American  Congress,  and,  after 
the  example  of  Washington,  surren- 
dered his  commission  to  the  President 
of  that  body.  Proceeding  thence  to 


New  York,  he  sailed  on  Christmas  day 
in  the  Nymphe  for  France. 

For  the  next  two  years  he  emploj  ed 
himself  in  forwarding  the  interests  of 
the  American  Confederacy,  and  in  phi- 
lanthropic efforts  connected  with  his 
.own  countrymen.  He  united  with 
Malesherbes  in  an  attempt  to  secure 
the  civil  rights  of  Protestants  in  France, 
protested  against  the  slave-trade,  pur- 
chasing a  plantation  in  Cayenne,  to 
carry  out  a  plan  of  gradual  emancipa- 
tion, and  projected  a  comprehensive 
league  of  the  European  powers  to 
check  the  pirates  of  the  Barbary 
States.  These  pursuits  sufficiently  in- 
dicate the  bent  of  his  mind,  which  was 
toward  practical  reforms  in  govern- 
ment. In  the  initial  measures  of  the 
French  Revolution  he  consequently 
became  a  leader.  He  was  a  member 
of  the  Assembly  of  Notables,  convened 
in  1787,  to  provide  relief  for  the  ruin- 
ed finances,  when  he  raised  his  voice 
against  the  use  of  the  lettre  de  cachet^ 
advocated  other  reforms,  and  proposed 
the  assembly  of  the  States-General. 
That  body  met  ^n  1789,  when  he  took 
a  prominent  part  in  its  deliberations, 
and,  on  the  fall  of  the  Bastile,  when 
the  preservation  of  civil  order  fell  into 
the  hands  of  the  Assembly,  was  cre- 
ated commander-in-chief  of  the  national 
guards  of  Paris.  It  is  to  him  that 
France  is  indebted  for  the  tricolor,  as 
a  badge  of  freedom.  Blue  and  red, 
the  old  colors  of  the  capital,  had  been 
adopted  by  the  people  as  a  sign  of  op- 
position  to  the  court,  when  he  dexter- 
ously added  to  them  the  royal  white, 
prophesying  to  the  people,  as  he  first 
placed  the  cockade  in  his  hat,  that  it 
would  be  a  badge  to  gc  round  the 


272 


GILBERT-MO  TIER  DE   LAFAYETTE. 


world.  As  a  token  of  the  first  fruits 
of  this  newly  acquired  freedom,  he  sent 
to  Washington  a  memorial  of  the  past, 
which  still  remains  among  the  trea- 
sured relics  of  Mount  Vernon.  "  Give 
me  leave,  my  dear  general,"  he  wrote, 
on  the  17th  of  March,  1790,  "to  pre- 
sent you  with  a  picture  of  the  Bastile, 
just  as  it  looked  a  few  days  after  I 
had  ordered  its  demolition,  with  the 
main  key  of  the  fortress  of  despotism. 
It  is  a  tribute,  which  I  owe  as  a  son  to 
my  adopted  father,  as  an  aid-de-camp 
to  my  general,  as  a  missionary  of  lib- 
erty to  its  patriarch."  At  the  same 
time,  with  a  consciousness  of  the  calm, 
impartial  glance  of  the  man  whom  he 
was  addressing,  the  protector  of  lib- 
erty, who  was  not  to  be  deceived  by 
any  of  its  false  appearances,  he  quali- 
fies somewhat  his  expectations  of  the 
new  era.  "  Our  Revolution,"  says  he, 
"  is  getting  on  as  well  as  it  can  with  a 
nation  that  has  attained  its  liberty  at 
once,  and  is  still  liable  to  mistake  li- 
centiousness for  freedom."  To  his 
glowing  enumeration  of  "abuses  and 
prejudices "  destroyed,  he  adds  a  res- 
ervation in  the  sentence :  "  this  revolu- 
tion, in  which  nothing  will  be  wanting 
but  energy  of  government,  as  it  was  in 
America."  True  enough,  for  there  had 
been  danger  also  at  home  in  the  ab- 
sence of  that  consolidated  system  of 
law  and  order,  that  wisdom  of  the 
Constitution,  which  even  then  Wash- 
ington and  his  companions  were  shap- 
ing and  cementing.  When  that  letter 
was  written,  Lafayette  had  still  in  his 
recollection  a  scene  which  he  could 
never  forget,  a  most  instructive  lesson 
of  the  dangers  of  relaxed  authority, 
the  march  of  the  populace  to  Versailles 


of  the  previous  5th  of  October.  It 
had  been  a  day  of  riot  in  the  city,  de- 
manding all  the  influence  of  Lafayette, 
in  his  position  as  commander  of  the 
National  Guard,  to  check  disorder 
Late  in  the  afternoon  he  learnt  that 
the  mob  had  proceeded  with  arms  to 
Versailles,  whither  he  hastened  with  a 
detachment  to  protect  the  royal  family. 
He  reached  the  palace  at  ten.  o'clock, 
and,  though  he  offered  himself  as  a 
protector,  was  received  with  suspicion. 
"  Here  comes  Cromwell."  was  the  ex 
clamation,  as  he  entered  the  court. 
"  Cromwell,"  was  his  answer,  "  would 
not  have  come  here  alone."  Desirous 
of  stationing  his  guard  for  the  night, 
he  asked  that  all  the  avenues  to  the 
palace  should  be  put  under  his  care. 
The  etiquette  of  the  court  forbade  this, 
and  he  anxiously  took  such  measures 
as  he  could,  leaving  the  royal  troops 
to  provide  for  the  safety  of  their 
charge.  He  did  not  retire  to  rest  till 
five  in  the  morning,  and  was  soon  after 
summoned  by  word  that  the  mob  had 
entered  the  palace  and  sought  the  life 
of  the  queen.  Hastening  to  the  spot, 
he  succeeded  in  protecting  the  royal 
family.  The  mob,  meanwhile,  was 
raging  without,  and  loud  in  its  out- 
cries against  the  queen.  With  happy 
instinct,  or  by  an  admirable  knowledge 
of  his  countrymen,  he  proposed  to  her 
to  appear  with  him  on  the  balcony  ac- 
companied by  the  dauphin.  It  was 
but  a  scene  in  dumb  show  before  the 
tumultuous  crowd,  but  it  was  success- 
ful. Kissing  her  hand  in  a  sileut  act 
of  homage,  the  leader  of  the  people 
recalled  their  old  feeling  of  allegiance, 
and  their  vague  hostility  was  turned 
into  positive  enthusiasm  toward  the 


GILBERT-HOTTER  BE  LAFAYETTE. 


273 


object  of  their  hatred.  Cries  of,  Long 
live  the  queen !  Long  live  the  gene- 
ral !  arose  from  the  mob.  For  that 
time,  at  least,  Marie  Antoinette  was 
saved. 

The  part  taken  by  Lafayette  in  these 
early  scenes  of  the  Revolution,  was 
eminently  disinterested.  He  seconded 
the  proposition  in  the  Assembly  abol- 
ishing titles  of  nobility,  and  never  after, 
through  all  the  vicissitudes  of  govern- 
ment and  society  which  he  experienced, 
bore  his  title  of  Marquis.  He  asked 
no  reward  for  his  services,  and  would 
receive  none.  Opposed  to  all  unneces- 
sary delegation  of  power,  he  provided 
that  the  command  of  the  National 
Guard,  his  institution,  which  had  been 
extended  throughout  the  nation,  should 
be  limited  to  the  districts.  The  direc- 
tion of  the  whole  would,  otherwise, 
have  been  conferred  upon  him.  It  was 
his  desire  that  the  nation  should  enjoy 
the  blessings  of  a  Constitutional  Gov. 
ernment;  for  this  end,  he  first  intro- 
duced the  Declaration  of  Rights  in  the 
States-General,  and  labored  for  the 
adoption  of  the  Constitution.  In  the 
great  act  of  ratification  of  that  instru- 
ment in  the  Federation  of  the  Champ 
de  Mars,  one  of  the  most  extraordinary 
pageants  ever  enacted,  next  to  the 
king,  to  whom  he  swore  allegiance,  he 
bore  the  most  conspicuous  part.  At 
war  with  the  Jacobins,  a  friend  to  con- 
stitutional monarchy,  Lafayette  was 
exposed  to  misapprehension  on  all 
Bides.  It  was  not  a  position  which 
could  be  long  sustained  in  the  rapid 
movement  of  events.  The  flight  of  the 
king  brought  out  all  its  difficulties ; 
the  people  suspected  him  for  aiding 
it ;  the  royal  family  hated  him  for  ar- 
35 


resting  it.  What  wonder  then,  that, 
having  no  passion  for  power,  he  sought 
retirement  ?  Feeling  that  he  had  dis- 
charged his  part  in  his  labors  for  the 
constitution,  he  resigned  his  command 
of  the  Guard,  and  sought  the  repose  of 
home. 

Next  came  war  with  Austria,  de- 
clared by  Louis  XVI.  himself  in  April, 
1792.  Lafayette  was  appointed  one  of 
the  three-major  generals  to  command 
on  the  frontier,  and  was  advancing  to 
the  work  assigned  him — the  invasion 
of  Belgium — when  his  movements  were 
arrested  by  the  machinations  of  the 
Jacobins,  who  opposed  his  authority. 
His  own  course  was  at  once  taken. 
He  denounced  this  faction  in  a  letter 
to  the  Assembly,  "their  usurpations, 
disorganizing  maxims  and  insensate 
fury,"  and,  to  strengthen  the  impres- 
sion which  his  remonstrance  had  made, 
appeared  himself  before  that  body.  It 
was  too  late,  however,  for  eloquence  or 
reason  to  prevail.  The  constitution,  on 
which  he  rested  all  his  hopes,  was  a 
thing  of  the  past.  The  army  itself 
was  no  longer  faithful.  Revolution 
had  swallowed  up  all  sober  reforma- 
tion. Denounced  in  the  Assembly, 
and  knowing  well  that  life  was  no 
longer  possible  for  him  in  France,  he 
resolved  on  the  only  course  left  foi 
him — to  leave  the  country.  Accord- 
ingly, a  few  days  after  the  massacre  at 
the  Tuileries,  of  the  10th  of  August, 
he  rode  away  from  the  army  with  half 
a  dozen  companions,  and  crossed  the 
frontier  to  the  enemy's  outposts  at 
Rochefort,  with  the  intention  of  mak- 
ing his  way  to  Holland.  Frankly  ap- 
plying for  passports,  and  expecting  at 
least  the  rights  of  prisoners  of  war 


274 


GILBERT-MOTIEK  DE  LAFAYETTE. 


they  were  treated  by  the  Austrian  gen- 
erals with  the  greatest  indignity.  They 
were  asked  for  information  which 
would  betray  their  country,  and  even 
called  upon  to  surrender  the  wealth 
which,  it  was  supposed,  they  had 
brought  with  them.  Nothing  could 
be  more  unworthy,  save  the  cruelty 
which  followed.  Lafayette  was  car- 
ried from  Luxembourg  to  a  miserable 
dungeon  at  Wesel,  in  the  Prussian  ter- 
ritory ;  thence  to  Magdeburg,  the  scene 
of  .the  imprisonment  of  the  famous 
Baron  Trenck;  thence  to  Neisse,  in 
Silesia;  thence  to  the  Austrian  dun- 
geon at  Olmutz,  in  Moravia. 

o 

The  imprisonment  at  Olmutz,  at  all 
times  exceedingly  rigid,  for  a  time  was 
so  severe  as  to  prove  injurious  to  the 
health  of  Lafayette.  He  was  confined 
alone ;  the  atmosphere  of  the  place  was 
unhealthy ;  he  was  not  allowed  to  cross 
its  threshold,  nor  was  he  permitted 
any  communication  with  his  family  or 
friends  by  letter.  They  were  not  even 
to  know  of  his  existence.  It  was  some 
time  before  they  learnt  that  he  was 
alive. 

By  the  aid  of  Count  Lally  Tolendal, 
a  French  refugee,  in  London,  Dr.  Erick 
Bollmann,  a  Hanoverian,  who  had  ef- 
fected the  escape  of  Count  Narbonne 
from  Paris,  was  engaged  to  visit  the 
continent,  to  learn  something  of  the 
fate  of  Lafayette.  He  could  at  first 
ascertain  only  that  the  Prussians  had 
determined  to  give  him  up  to  Austria. 
The  following  summer  of  1794,  he  was 
sent  again,  and,  becoming  acquainted 
with  the  fact  that  there  were  several 
state  prisoners  at  Olmutz,  convinced 
himself  they  could  be  no  other  than 
Lafayette  and  hi&  companions.  He 


contrived,  through  the  surgeon  of  th(3 
post,  without  exciting  the  suspicion  of 
that  officer,  to  acquaint  Lafayette  with 
his  intentions  to  effect  his  rescue.  So 
patient  was  he  in  his  efforts,  that  he 
resided  six  months  at  Vienna,  with  a 
view  to  carry  out  his  project.  There 
he  met  a  young  American,  Francis  K. 
Huger,  of  South  Carolina,  son  of  the 
Major  Huger,  at  whose  house,  at 
Georgetown,  Lafayette  had  first  land- 
ed in  America.  A  plan  for  rescuing 
the  prisoner  was  arranged  between 
them.  It  had  been  ascertained  that  in 
consequence  of  his  broken  health,  La- 
fayette was  taken  out  by  an  officer 
into  the  country  for  an  airing.  It  was 
while  thus  at  large  that  he  was  to  be 
seized  and  carried  off  on  horseback  be- 
fore the  alarm  could  be  given.  They 
were  in  hopes  to  conduct  him  to  the 
town  of  Hoff,  some  twenty-five  miles 
distant,  where  their  carriage  would  be 
in  waiting.  The  preparations  were 
made  with  no  little  skill.  As  there 
would  be  three  travelers,  in  case  they 
succeeded  at  the  outset,  and  but  two 
horses,  one  of  these  was  trained  to  car- 
ry two  persons.  The  first  week  of 
November,  1794,  Dr.  Bollmann  and 
Mr.  Huger  were  at  the  inn  at  Olrnutz, 
on  the  pretence  of  visiting  the  sur- 
geon, to  whom  they  represented  them 
selves  as  travellers  on  their  way  tc 
England.  Waiting  their  opportunity 
when  Lafayette  should  be  taken  out, 
they  followed  the  carriage  in  which  he 
was  conveyed  till  it  was  stopped  in  an 
open  plain,  a  few  miles  from  the  town. 
The  prisoner  then  alighted,  and  walked 
arm  in  arm  with  the  officer.  The  two 
friends  now  made  their  attempt  at  the 
rescue.  Quickly  coming  up  and  alight 


GILBERT-HOTTER  DE  LAFAYETTE. 


275 


ing,  a  struggle  ensued  with  the  officer, 
with  whom  Lafayette  was  already  en- 
gaged. It  ended  in  the  deliverance  of 
the  latter,  who  was  placed  upon  a  horse, 
and  directed  by  Mr.  Huger  to  proceed 
to  Hoif.  Losing  the  aspirate,  the  Gen- 
eral thought  it  was  a  simple  injunction 
to  be  off.  It  was  necessarily  a  confus- 
ed affair  altogether,  without  time  for 
explanation  or  concert,  in  a  region  en- 
tirely unknown  to  Lafayette,  who  was 
unacquainted,  except  by  the  precon- 
certed signal  which  they  had  made — 
raising  their  hats  and  wiping  their 
foreheads — with  the  persons  of  his  de- 
liverers. To  add  to  the  perplexity,  the 
horse  intended  for  Lafayette  had  bro- 
ken from  his  bridle,  and  got  away  dur- 
ing the  scuffle.  So  he  was  mounted 
on  the  animal  trained  to  carry  the  oth- 
er two,  while  they  lost  time  in  regain- 
ing their  steed,  and  when  they  attempt- 
ed to  ride  him  together  were  both 
thrown  off.  Huger  then  magnani- 
mously bade  Bollmann  to  ride  on  to 
the  assistance  of  the  general,  while  he 
made  his  way  on  foot.  The  little  par- 
ty was  thus  separated ;  Huger  to  be 
immediately  captured  in  the  neighbor- 
hood, Bollmann  to  proceed  to  Hoff, 
waiting  in  vain,  till  he  was  arrested, 
and  Lafayette  himself  to  wander  to  the 
frontier,  an  object  of  suspicion,  till  he 
was  in  a  few  days  reclaimed  by  the 
guard  of  his  prison.  All  three  were 
then  immured  in  Olmutz,  in  separate 
dungeons,  ignorant  of  one  another's 
fate.  For  six  months  Bollmann  and 
linger  were  subjected  to  a  most  cruel 
imprisonment,  when  they  obtained 
their  release  by  the  aid  of  a  friendly 
nobleman,  Count  Metro wsky.  The 
treatment  of  Lafayette  was  equally 


severe.  Stripped  of  the  few  comforts 
which  had  been  allowed  him,  he  was 
ignominiously  chained  and  maltreated 
till  his  health  sank  under  the  inflic- 
tion. To  add  to  his  calamities  the  last 
horror  of  mental  suffering,  his  few  days 
of  freedom  in  the  outer  world  had 
brought  him  the  sad  news  of  the  reign 
of  terror  in  France.  But  his  imagina- 
tion, left  to  work  upon  that  material, 
could  not  transcend  the  dread  reality. 
The  worst  that  he  could  fear,  was 
equalled  in  the  execution  which  had 
taken  place  of  his  wife's  grandmother, 
her  mother  and  sister,  while  she  herself 
with  her  daughters  awaited  the  fatal 
day.  Happily  the  fate  of  Robespierre 
came  in  time  for  her  preservation.  By 
the  aid  of  Washington,  who  was  do- 
ing everything  in  his  power  to  procure 
her  husband's  release,  and  the  Ameri- 
can minister  at  Paris,  Mr.  Monroe,  she 
was  provided  with  funds,  which  ena- 
bled her,  acccompanied  by  her  daugh- 
ters, to  travel  through  Germany  to 
Vienna.  There  she  sought  an  inter- 
view with  the  Emperor  Francis  II., 
and  appealed  to  him  by  the  services  of 
her  husband  to  the  French  monarchy, 
by  the  recital  of  the  sufferings  of  her 
family,  and  other  tender  considera- 
tions, to  grant  his  release.  His  name 
was  yet  too  formidable  to  the  court  to 
allow  this  favor,  but  permission  was 
given  to  the  wife  and  daughters  to 
share  his  imprisonment,  with  the  hard 
condition,  however,  that  if  they  once 
entered  those  walls,  they  were  never 
to  leave  them.  When  her  health  fails 
her  in  the  dungeon,  and  she  asks  for 
leave  to  ^isit  the  capital  for  relief  and 
medical  aid,  she  is  reminded  of  the 
cruel  stipulation.  If  she  go,  she 


276 


GILBEKT-MOTIEK  DE  LAFAYETTE. 


must  not  return.  The  wife  of  his 
youth  had  endured  too  long  the  ago- 
nies of  separation  in  that  fearful  time 
to  risk  the  privation  again.  She  would 
not  accept  the  indulgence  on  those 
terms,  but  remained  to  suffer  in  the 
dungeon. 

Before  leaving  Paris,  by  the  kind- 
ness of  some  American  friends,  per- 
mission had  been  procured  for  the  de- 
parture of  her  son,  George  Washington 
Lafayette,  to  America,  where  a  friendly 
reception  awaited  him  from  General 
Washington,  in  whose  family  he  be- 
came established  at  Mount  Vernon. 
He  reached  America  in  the  summer  of 
1795,  and  remained  with  Washington 
till  the  first  report  came  of  his  father's 
liberation,  when  he  hastened  to  France, 
in  the  autumn  of  1797,  to  meet  him. 

That  liberation,  long  deferred,  which 
had  been  urged  by  all  the  influence  of 
Washington  and  by  the  liberal  party 
of  the  English  House  of  Commons,  by 
Wilberforce  and  by  Fox,  was  at  length 
granted  to  a  rougher  request  in  the 
authoritative  demand  of  General  Bona- 
parte, when  he  dictated  terms  of  peace 
after  his  first  brilliant  successes  in  com- 
mand of  the  army  of  Italy.  Lafayette 
and  his  family  were  thus  released  in 
September,  1797,  just  five  years  from 
the  date  of  his  falling  into  the  hands 
of  the  Austrians,  and  nearly  two  years 
after  his  wife  and  daughters  had  joined 
him  in  his  imprisonment.  The  health 
of  Madame  Lafayette,  though  she  sur- 
vived ten  years,  never  recovered  from 
the  effects  of  that  captivity. 

From  Olmutz,  Lafayette  was  attend- 
ed by  a  military  escort  to  Hamburg, 
where  he  was  placed  under  the  pro- 
tection of  the  American  consul,  Mr. 


John  Parish.  From  Hamburg,  ho. 
passed,  in  a  few  days,  to  the  neighbor 
ing  territory  of  Holstein,  where  he  was 
established  with  his  family  in  peace- 
ful retirement  for  nearly  two  years  at 
the  castle  of  Lemkhulen,  in  the  vicinity 
of  Wittmold,  whence  he  removed  to  a 
residence  in  Holland.  Changes,  mean- 
while, were  going  on  in  Paris,  tending 
to  the  consolidated  government  of  Na- 
poleon. Lafayette  waited  only  the  es- 
tablishment of  order  to  return.  The 
overthrow  of  the  Directory  gave  him 
this  opportunity.  He  hastened  to 
Paris  on  that  event,  secured  his  rights 
as  a  citizen,  was  offered  a  seat  in  the 
senate,  but  declined  it,  refusing  to 
sanction  the  usurpations  of  Napoleon. 
He  preferred  to  wait  in  retirement  the 
hoped-for  arrival  of  the  constitutional 
government,  to  which  he  was  pledged, 
and  to  which  he  remained  constant  to 
the  end.  His  retreat  was  at  that  es- 
tate of  Lagrange,  which  became  so  well 
known  to  Americans  as  the  seat  of  an 
elegant  hospitality.  It  was  a  portion 
of  the  family  property  of  his  wife, 
which,  preserved  entire  during  the 
Revolution,  was  now  restored  to  its 
owners.  Situated  about  forty  miles 
from  the  metropolis,  in  the  department 
of  Seine- et-Marne,  it  was  distant  enough 
to  be  out  of  the  vortex  of  city  life,  and 
near  enough  to  share  the  liberal  society 
of  the  capital.  There  from  time  to 
time  assembled  authors,  artists,  poli- 
ticians, eminent  travelers;  always  re- 
ceived  with  welcome  by  the  genial  host 
and  his  family. 

The  whole  of  the  period  of  the  rule 
of  Napoleon  w'as  thus  passed  by  Lafay- 
ette in  dignified  retirement,  nor  could 
he  be  withdrawn  from  his  farm  by  any 


GILBERT-MOTIER  DE  LAFAYETTE. 


277 


desire  for  preferment  on  the  restoration 
of  the  Bourbons.  When  Bonaparte 
returned  from  Elba,  he  was  induced, 
by  the  prospect  of  liberal  measures,  to 
participate  again  in  public  affairs  as  a 
representative  of  the  people.  Here  he 
acted  again,  as  usual,  an  independent 
part,  voting  supplies  for  the  defence 
of  the  country,  but  opposing  the  des- 
potic projects  of  Napoleon,  who,  in  his 
extremity  after  the  battle  of  Waterloo, 
was  bent  upon  superseding  the  Cham- 
ber by  a  last  effort  at  dictatorship. 
After  the  abdication  which  was  ad- 
vised by  him  took  place,  Lafayette  was 
employed  in  an  ineffectual  negotiation 
to  arrest  the  advance  of  the  allies.  On 
their  taking  possession  of  the  capital, 
he  retired  to  Lagrange.  After  a  while, 
he  was  again  elected  to  the  Chamber 
of  Deputies,  where  he  quietly  main- 
tained his  ground  in  favor  of  liberal 
measures  as  opportunity  arose. 

In  1824,  this  life  of  unobtrusive 
attention  to  his  public  and  private 
duties  was  varied  by  a  fourth  visit  to 
the  United  States.  An  invitation  had 
been  given  him  by  Congress,  and  a  na- 
tional vessel  placed  by  the  President, 
Mr.  Monroe,  at  his  disposal.  He  pre- 
ferred, however,  the  ordinary  passage 
in  a  Havre  packet,  and  reached  New 
York  by  that  means  on  the  fifteenth  of 
August.  He  was  accompanied  only  by 
Ms  son,  George  Washington,  and  his 
secretary.  His  journey  through  the 
country  was  everywhere  a  triumph. 
He  visited  the  eastern,  middle,  southern 
and  western  States,  traversing  the  land 
from  Maine  to  Louisiana,  from  the  sea- 
board to  St.  Louis.  From  the  capitol 
at  Washington  to  the  humblest  village 
through  which  he  passed,  every  one  did 


him  honor.  It  was  a  national  jubilee 
of  hospitality  and  enthusiasm.  The 
eloquence  of  Henry  Clay,  the  Speaker 
of  the  House  of  Representatives,  greet- 
ed him  on  his  introduction  to  Congress ; 
he  took  part  in  the  celebration  on  the 
field  of  Yorktown,  of  his  old  victory  • 
he  visited  the  tomb  of  Washington, 
and  knelt  in  tears  by  his  coffin;  at 
Charleston  he  saw  again  the  gallant 
Huger,  who  had  been  imprisoned  in 
his  cause  at  Olmutz ;  he  was  hailed  by 
Webster  as  he  participated  in  the  cere- 
mony of  laying  the  corner-stone  of  the 
monument  at  Bunker  Hill.  Every, 
where  interesting  incidents  of  tho  most 
heart-stirring  character  arose  in  hia 
path,  as  the  hero  of  the  Revolution 
visited  the  battle-fields  where  he  and 
his  brethren  had  fought,  the  homes 
whose  hospitality  he  had  shared  with 
Washington — the  man  of  a  new  gener 
ation,  whose  fathers  had  been  his  illus- 
trious companions.  He  saw  in  their 
dwellings  at  Monticello,  Montpelier 
and  elsewhere,  five  Presidents  of  the 
Union — John  Adams,  Jefferson,  Madi- 
son, Monroe,  and  John  Quincy  Adams. 
The  history  of  his  progress  through  the 
country,  minutely  related,  would  pre- 
sent to  the  reader  all  the  distinguished 
men  of  America  of  the  period,  an  ex 
hibition  of  its  education,  arts,  industry, 
agriculture,  manufactures,  its  happi- 
ness and  prosperity — for  all  were  made, 
in  some  way  or  other,  to  minister  to 
this  reception.  Nor  was  the  occasion 
suffered  to  passed  away  without  a  sub- 
stantial addition  to  the  fortunes  of  the 
nation's  guest.  Congress  handsomely 
appropriated  the  sum  of  two  hundred 
thousand  dollars,  and  a  grant  of  twenty  • 
four  thousand  acres  of  land,  as  a  testi 


2T8 


GILBEET-MOTIER  DE  LAFAYETTE. 


inony  to  him  of  the  national  gratitude. 
At  length,  after  a  year  spent  in  these 
receptions  and  festivities,  he  took  leave 
of  the  country,  with  the  parting  bene- 
diction of  the  President  at  Washing- 
ton, embarking  in  a  national  vessel, 
the  Brandywine,  on  the  Potomac.  His 
last  farewell  was  to  the  home  of  Wash- 
ington. 

On  his  return  to  France,  in  the  au- 
tumn of  1825,  Lafayette  carried  with 
him  the  prestige  of  his  importance  in 
America.  He  became  more  prominent 
in  the  Chamber  of  Deputies.  He  was 
the  available  leader  of  the  popular 
party,  as  the  rule  of  Charles  X.  revived 
the  despotic  principles  of  his  race. 
A  tour  to  his  birthplace,  in  the  sum- 
mer of  1829,  was  the  occasion  of  a 
striking  popular  manifestation.  Wher- 
ever he  appeared,  crowds  and  a  wel- 
come attended  him ;  towns  were  bril- 
liantly illuminated ;  there  was  a  great 
demonstration  at  Lyons  —  all  signifi- 
cant, not  only  of  the  personal  regard  in 
which  he  was  held,  but  of  the  ap- 
proaching downfall  of  the  government. 
The  next  year  the  course  of  Charles  X., 
and  his  minister,  Polignac,  brought  af- 
fairs to  a  crisis.  The  Three  Days  of 
July,  of  barricades  and  popular  out- 
break, ended  in  the  dethronement  of 
the  king.  Lafayette,  who,  as  in  1789, 
had  been  called  to  the  command  of  the 
National  Guard,  and  was  a  prime 
mover  in  the  revolution,  was  acknowl- 
edged master  of  the  position.  An  in- 
fluential popular  party  would  have 
made  him  president  of  a  republic.  He 
oref  erred  to  fall  in  with  the  views  of  his 


brethren  in  the  Chamber  of  Deputies, 
and  call  the  Duke  of  Orleans  to  the 
throne,  which  he  designed  shonld  be  a 
monarchy,  surrounded  by  republican 
institutions. 

Lafayette  survived  but  a  few  years 
the  accession  of  Louis  Philippe.  One 
of  the  last  scenes  in  which  he  was 
prominently  before  the  public,  was  at 
the  funeral  of  General  Lamarque,  in 
1832,  when  a  popular  manifestation 
was  attempted.  The  people  removed 
his  horses  from  his  coach  and  would 
have  dragged  him  in  triumph  to  the 
Hotel  de  Ville,  but  he  had  no  taste  for 
irregular  movements  of  this  kind,  and 
quietly  managed  to  get  conducted  to 
his  home,  while  the  government  was 
calling  out  all  its  forces  to  suppress  an 
insurrection,  of  which  he  was  supposed 
to  be  at  the  head.  He  survived  this 
event  about  two  years.  Another  fune- 
ral which  he  attended,  of  a  colleague 
of  the  Chamber  of  Deputies,  was  the 
cause  of  his  death,  from  the  exposure 
to  which  he  was  subjected.  He  took 
a  cold,  which  settled  on  his  lungs,  and 
after  an  illness  of  more  than  two 
months,  aggravated  by  a  relapse,  died 
in  Paris,  May  20th,  1834,  in  his  seven- 
ty-seventh year.  He  was  buried  in  a 
humble,  quiet  cemetery,  in  an  out-of- 
the-way  part  of  the  city,  by  the  side 
of  his  beloved  wife.  A  plain,  reclin- 
ing slab,  with  a  simple  inscription, 
marks  his  grave.  There  are  few  Ame- 
ricans who  visit  Paris,  who  do  not  turn 
for  a  few  moments  from  its  pomp  and 
gaieties  to  visit  this  unpretending 
spot. 


THOMAS    JEFFERSON. 


IN  his  Autobiography,  written  to- 
wards the  close  of  his  life,  the  au- 
thor of  the  Declaration  of  Independ- 
ence, thinking,  doubtless  his  new  po- 
litical career  a  better  passport  to  fame 
with  posterity  than  any  conditions  of 
ancestry  in  the  old  society  which  he 
had  superseded,  while  he  could  not  be 
insensible  to  the  worth  of  a  respect- 
able family  history,  says  of  the  Ran- 
dolphs, from  whom  he  was  descended 
on  the  mother's  side,  "  they  trace  their 
pedigree  far  back  in  England  and  Scot- 
land, to  which  let  every  one  ascribe 
the  faith  and  merit  he  chooses."  What- 
ever value  may  be  set  by  his  biogra- 
phers upon  an  ancient  lineage,  they 
cannot  overlook  the  fact  —  most  im- 
portant in  its  influence  upon  his  future 
history — that  he  was  introduced  by 
his  family  relationships  at  birth  into 
a  sphere  of  life  in  Virginia,  which  gave 
him  many  social  advantages.  The  lev- 
eller of  the  old  aristocracy  was  by  no 
means  a  self-made  man  of  the  people, 
struggling  upward  through  difficulty 
and  adversity.  His  father,  Peter  Jef- 
ferson, belonged  to  a  family  originally 
from  Wales,  which  had  been  among 
the  first  settlers  of  the  colony.  In 
1611),  one  of  the  name  was  seated  ir 


the  Assembly  at  Jamestown,  the  first 
legislative  body  of  Europeans,  it  is 
said,  that  ever  met  in  the  New  World. 
The  particular  account  of  the  family 
begins  with  the  grandfather  of  Thomas 
Jefferson,  who  owned  some  lands  in 
Chesterfield  County.  His  third  son. 
Peter,  established  himself  as  a  planter 
on  certain  lands  which  he  had  "pat- 
ented," or  come  into  possession  of  by 
purchase,  in  Albermarle  County,  in 
the  vicinity  of  Carter's  Mountain, 
where  the  Rivanna  makes  its  way 
through  the  Range;  and  about  the 
time  of  his  settlement  married  Jane, 
daughter  of  Isham  Randolph,  of  Dun- 
geness,  in  Goochland  County,  of  the 
eminent  old  Virginia  race,  to  which 
allusion  has  already  been  made,  a  stock 
which  has  extended  its  branches 
through  every  department  of  worth 
and  excellence  in  the  State.  Isham 
Randolph  was  a  man  of  talent  and 
education,  as  well  as  noted  for  the 
hospitality  practiced  by  every  gentle- 
man of  his  wealthy  position.  His 
memory  is  gratefully  preserved  in  the 
correspondence  of  the  naturalists,  Col- 
linson  and  Bartram.  The  latter  was 
commended  to  his  care  in  one  of  hia 
scientific  tours,  and  enjoyed  his  hearty 


280 


THOMAS   JEFFEKSON. 


welcome.  His  daughter,  Jane,  we  are 
told,  "possessed  a  most  amiable  and 
affectionate  disposition,  a  lively,  cheer- 
ful temper,  and  a  great  fund  of  hu- 
mor," qualities  which  had  their  influ- 
ence upon  her  son's  character.  Her 
marriage  to  Peter  Jefferson  took  place 
at  the  age  of  nineteen,  and  the  fruit  of 
this  union,  the  third  child  and  first 
son,  was  Thomas,  the  subject  of  this 
sketch.  He  was  born  at  the  new  fam- 
ily location  at  Shadwell,  April  2d  (old 
style),  1743. 

Peter  Jefferson,  the  father,  was  a 
model  man  for  a  frontier  settlement, 
tall  in  stature,  of  extraordinary  strength 
of  body,  capable  of  enduring  any  fa- 
tigue in  the  wilderness,  with  corres- 
ponding health  and  vigor  of  mind. 
He  was  educated  as  a  surveyor,  and 
in  this  capacity  engaged  in  a  govern- 
ment commission  to  draw  the  bound- 
ary line  between  Virginia  and  North 
Carolina.  Two  years  before  his  death, 
which  occurred  suddenly  in  his  fiftieth 
year,  in  1757,  he  was  chosen  a  member 
of  the  House  of  Burgesses.  His  son 
was  then  only  fourteen,  but  he  had 
already  derived  many  impressions  from 
the  instructions  and  example  of  his 
father,  and  considerable  resemblance 
is  traced  between  them.  Mr.  Randall, 
in  his  biography,  notices  the  inherit- 
ance of  physical  strength,  of  a  certain 
plainness  of  manners,  and  honest  love 
of  independence,  even  of  a  fondness  for 
reading — for  the  stalwart  surveyor  was 
accustomed  to  solace  his  leisure  with 
his  Spectator  and  his  Shakespeare. 

The  son  was  early  sent  to  school, 
and,  before  his  father's  death,  was  in- 
structed in  the  elements  of  Greek,  and 
Latin,  and  French,  by  Mr.  Douglass,  a 


Scottish  clergyman.  It  was  his  pa- 
rent's dying  wish  that  he  should  re- 
ceive a  good  classical  education ;  and 
the  seed  proved  to  be  sown  in  a  good 
soil.  The  lessons  which  the  youth 
had  already  received,  were  resumed 
under  the  excellent  instruction  of  the 
Rev.  James  Maury,  at  his  residence, 
and  thence,  in  1760,  the  pupil  passed 
to  William  and  Mary  College.  He 
was  now  in  his  eighteenth  year,  a  tall, 
thin  youth,  of  a  ruddy  complexion,  his 
hair  inclining  to  red,  an  adept  in  manly 
and  rural  sports,  a  good  dancer,  some- 
thing of  a  musician,  full  of  vivacity. 
It  is  worth  noticing,  that  the  youth  of 
Jefferson  was  of  a  hearty,  joyous  char- 
acter. 

Williamsburg,  also,  the  seat  of  the 
college,  was  then  anything  but  a  scho- 
lastic hermitage  for  the  mortification 
of  youth.  In  winter,  during  the  ses- 
sion of  the  court  and  the  sittings  of 
the  colonial  legislature,  it  was  the 
focus  of  provincial  fashion  and  gayety ; 
and  between  study  and  dissipation  the 
ardent  young  Jefferson  had  before  him 
the  old  problem  of  good  and  evil  not 
always  leading  to  the  choice  of  virtue. 
It  is  to  the  credit  of  his  manly  percep- 
tions and  healthy  tastes,  even  then, 
that  while  he  freely  partook  of  the 
amusements  incidental  to  his  station 
and  time  of  life,  he  kept  his  eye  stead- 
ily on  loftier  things.  "It  was  my 
great  good  fortune,"  he  says  in  his 
Autobiography,  "and  what  probably 
fixed  the  destinies  of  my  life,  that  Dr 
William  Small,  of  Scotland,  was  then 
professor  of  mathematics,  a  man  pro- 
found in  most  of  the  useful  branches 
of  science,  with -a  happy  talent  of  com- 
munication, correct  and  gentlemanly 


THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 


281 


manners,  and  an  enlarged  and  liberal 
inind."  His  instructions,  communi- 
cated not  only  in  college  hours,  but  in 
familiar  personal  intimacy,  warmed 
the  young  student  with  his  first,  as  it 
became  his  constant,  passion  for  nat- 
ural science.  This  happy  instructor 
also  o-ave  a  course  of  lectures  in  ethics 

O 

and  rhetoric,  which  were  doubtless 
equally  profitable  to  his  young  pupil 
in  the  opening  of  his  mind  to  knowl- 
edge. He  had  also  an  especial  fond- 
ness for  mathematics,  "  reading  off  its 
processes  with  the  facility  of  common 
discourse."  He  sometimes  studied,  in 
his  second  year,  fifteen  hours  a  day, 
taking  exercise  in  a  brisk  walk  of  a 
mile  at  evening. 

Jefferson  was  only  two  years  at  col- 
lege, but  his  education  was  happily 
continued  in  his  immediate  entrance 
upon  the  study  of  the  law  with  George 
Wythe,  the  memorable  chancellor  of 
Virginia,  of  after  days,  to  whom  he 
was  introduced  by  Dr.  Small,  and  of 
whose  personal  qualities — his  temper- 
ance and  suavity,  his  logic,  and  elo- 
quence, his  disinterested  public  virtue 
— he  wrote  a  worthy  eulogium.  The 
same  learned  friend  also  made  him  ac- 
quainted with  Governor  Fauquier,  then 
in  authority,  "the  ablest  man,"  says 
Jefferson,  "  who  ever  filled  the  office." 
At  his  courtly  table  the  four  met  to- 
gether in  familiar  and  liberal  conver- 
sation. It  was  a  privilege  to  the  youth 
of  the  first  importance,  bringing  him, 
at  the  outset,  into  a  sphere  of  public 
life  which  he  was  destined  afterwards, 
in  Europe  and  America,  so  greatly  to 
adorn.  He  passed  five  years  in  the 
study  of  the  law  at  Williamsburg,  and, 
without  intermitting  his  studies,  at  his 
•  36 


home  at  Shadwell.  Nor,  diligent  as  he 
was,  is  it  to  be  supposed  that  his  time 
was  altogether  spent  in  study.  He  yet 
found  leisure,  as  his  early  tell-tale  cor- 
respondence with  his  friend  Page,  af- 
terwards Governor  of  Virginia,  shows, 
to  harbor  a  fond  attachment  for  a  fair 
"  Belinda,"  as  he  called  her,  reversing 
the  letters  of  the  name  and  writing 
them  in  Greek,  or  playing  upon  the 
word  in  Latin.  The  character  of  the 
young  lady,  Miss  Rebecca  Burwell,  of 
an  excellent  family,  does  credit  to  his 
attachment,  for  it  was  marked  by  its 
religious  enthusiasm,  but  nothing  came 
of  it  beyond  a  boyish  disappointment.* 
In  1767  he  was  introduced  to  the 
bar  of  the  General  Court  of  Virginia 
by  his  friend  Mr.  Wythe,  and  imme- 
diately entered  on  a  successful  career 
of  practice,  interrupted  only  by  the 
Revolution.  His  memorandum  books, 
which  he  kept  minutely  and  diligently 
as  Washington  himself,  show  how  ex- 
tensively he  was  employed  in  these 
seven  years ;  while  the  directions  which 
he  gave  in  later  life  to  young  students, 
exhibit  a  standard  of  application,  which 
he  had  no  doubt  followed  himself,  of 
the  utmost  proficiency.  His  "  suffi- 
cient groundwork  "  for  the  study  of 
the  law  includes  a  liberal  course  of 
mathematics,  natural  philosophy,  eth- 
ics, rhetoric,  politics,  and  history.  His 
pursuit  of  the  science  itself  ascended 
to  the  antique  founts  of  the  profession. 


*Mr.  John  Esten  Cooke,  of  Virginia,  author 
of  the  eminently  judicious  biography  of  Jeffer- 
son in  Appleton's  new  Cyclopaedia,  has  sketched 
this  love  affair  hi  a  pleasant  paper  on  the  "  Early 
years  of  Thomas  Jefferson."  The  "Page"  cor 
respondence  is  printed  hi  Professor  Tucker'a 
Life  of  Jefferson. 


THOMAS   JEFFERSON. 


He  was  a  well-trained,  skillful  lawyer, 
an  adept  in  the  casuistry  of  legal  ques- 
tions—  more  distinguished,  however, 
for  his  ability  in  argument  than  for 
his  power  as  an  advocate.  He  was 
throughout  his  life  little  of  an  orator, 
and  we  shall  find  him  hereafter,  in 
•scenes  where  eloquence  was  peculiarly 
felt,  more  powerful  in  the  committee 
room  than  in  the  debate. 

His  first  entrance  on  political  life 
was  at  the  age  of  twenty-six,  in  1769, 
when  he  was  sent  to  the  House  of 
Burgesses  from  the  County  of  Albe- 
marie,  the  entrance  on  a  troublous 
time  in  the  consideration  of  national 
grievances,  and  we  find  him  engaged 
at  once  in  preparing  the  resolutions 
and  address  to  the  governor's  message. 
The  House,  in  reply  to  the  recent  de- 
clarations of  Parliament,  reasserted  the 
American  principles  of  taxation  and 
petition,  and  other  questions  in  jeop- 
ardy, and,  in  consequence,  was  prompt- 
ly dissolved  by  Lord  Botetourt.  The 
members,  the  next  day,  George  Wash- 
ington among  them,  met  at  the  Raleigh 
tavern,  and  pledged  themselves  to  a 
non-importation  agreement. 

The  next  year,  on  the  conflagration 
of  the  house  at  Shadwell,  where  he 
had  his  home  with  his  mother,  he  took 
up  his  residence  at  the  adjacent  "Mon- 
ticello,"  also  on  his  own  paternal 
grounds,  in  a  portion  of  the  edifice  so 
famous  afterwards  as  the  dwelling- 
place  of  his  maturer  years.  Unhap- 
pily, many  of  his  early  papers,  his 
books  and  those  of  his  father,  were 
burnt  in  the  destruction  of  his  old 
home.  In  1772,  on  New  Year's  Day, 
he  took  a  step  further  in  domestic  life, 
in  marriage  with  Mrs.  Martha  Skelton, 


a  widow  of  twenty-three,  of  much 
beauty,  and  many  winning  accomplish- 
ments, the  daughter  of  John  Wayles,  a 
lawyer  of  skill  and  many  good  qual- 
ities, at  whose  death,  the  following 
year,  the  pair  came  into  possession  oi 
a  considerable  property.  In  this  cir- 
cumstance, and  in  the  management  of 
his  landed  estate,  we  may  trace  a  cer- 
tain resemblance  in  the  fortunes  of  the 
occupants  of  Monticello  and  Mount 
Vernon. 

Political  affairs  were  now  again  call- 
ing for  legislative  attention.  The  re- 
newed claim  of  the  British  to  send 
persons  for  state  offences  to  England, 
brought .  forward  in  Rhode  Island, 
awakened  a  strong  feeling  of  resistance 
among  the  Virginia  delegates,  a  por- 
tion of  whom,  including  Jefferson,  met 
at  the  Raleign  tavern,  and  drew  up 
resolutions  creating  a  Committee  of 
Correspondence  to  watch  the  proceed- 
ings of  Parliament,  and  keep  up  a  com- 
munication with  the  Colonies.  Jeffer- 
son was  appointed  to  offer  the  resolu- 
tions in  the  House,  but  declined  in 
favor  of  his  brother-in-law,  Dabney 
Carr.  They  were  passed,  and  a  com- 
mittee— all  notable  men  of  the  Revo- 
lution— was  appointed,  including  Pey- 
ton Randolph,  Richard  Henry  Lee, 
Patrick  Henry,  and  others,  ending  with 
Thomas  Jefferson.  The  Earl  of  Dun- 
more  then,  following  the  example  of 
his  predecessor,  dissolved  the  House. 

We  may  here  pause,  with  Mr.  Jeffer- 
son's latest  biograper,  to  notice  the 
friendship  of  Jefferson  with  Carr.  It 
belonged  to  their  school-boy  days,  and 
had  gained  strength  during  their  period 
of  legal  study,  when  they  had  kept 
1  company  together  in  the  shades  oi 


THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 


283 


Monticello,  and  made  nature  the  com- 
panion of  their  thoughts.  They  had 
their  favorite  rustic  seat  there  beneath 
an  oak,  and  there,  each  promised  the 
other  he  would  bury  the  survivor. 
The  time  soon  came,  a  month  after  the 
scene  at  the  Raleigh  tavern  we  have 
just  narrated,  when  Carr,  at  the  age 
of  thirty,  was  fatally  stricken  by  fever. 
The  friends  now  rest  together  in  the 
spot  where  their  youthful  summer 
days  were  passed.  Carr  had  been 
eight  years  married  to  Jefferson's  sis- 
ter, and  he  left  her  with  a  family  of 
six  children.  His  brother-in-law  took 
them  all  to  his  home.  The  sons,  Peter 
and  Dabney,  who  rose  high  in  the  Vir- 
ginia judiciary,  have  an  honored  place 
in  the  Jefferson  Correspondence,  call- 
ing forth  many  of  the  statesman's  best 
letters.  The  whole  family  was  edu- 
cated and  provided  for  by  him;  and 
here  again,  in  these  adopted  children, 
we  may  recognize  a  resemblance  to 
Mount  Vernon  with  its  young  Custises. 
The  new  Legislature  met,  as  usual, 
the  next  year,  and,  roused  by  the  pass- 
age of  the  Boston  Port  Bill,  a  few 
members,  says  Jefferson,  including 
Henry  and  himself,  resolved  to  place 
the  Assembly  "  in  the  line  with  Massa- 
chusetts." The  expedient  they  hit 
upon  was  a  fast  day,  which,  by  the 
help  of  some  old  Puritan  precedents, 
they  "  cooked  up  "  and  placed  in  the 
hands  of  a  grave  member  to  lay  before 
the  House.  It  was  passed,  and  the 
Governor,  "  as  usual,"  dissolved  the 
Assembly.  The  fast  was  appointed 
for  the  first  of  June,  the  day  on  which 
the  obnoxious  bill  was  to  take  effect, 
and  there  was  one  man  in  Virginia,  at 
least,  who  kept  it.  We  may  read  in 


the  diary  of  George  Washington,  of 
that  date,  "  Went  to  church,  and  fast- 
ed all  day." 

The  dissolved  Assembly  again  met 
at  the  Raleigh,  and  decided  upon  a 
Convention,  to  be  elected  by  the  peo- 
ple of  the  several  counties,  and  held 
at  Williamsburg,  so  that  two  bodies 
had  to  be  chosen,  one  to  assemble  in 
the  new  House  of  Burgesses,  the  other 
out  of  the  reach  of  government  con- 
trol. The  same  members,  those  of  the 
previous  House,  were  sent  for  both. 
Jefferson  again  represented  the  free- 
holders of  Albermarle.  The  instruc- 
tions which  the  county  gave,  supposed 
from  his  pen,  assert  the  radical  doc- 
trine of  the  independence  of  the  Colo- 
nial Legislatures,  as  the  sole  fount  of 
authority  in  new  laws.  The  Williams- 
burg  Convention  met  and  appointed 
delegates  to  the  first  General  Congress. 
Jefferson  was  detained  from  the  As- 
sembly by  illness,  but  he  forwarded  a 
draught  of  instructions  for  the  dele- 
gates which  was  not  adopted,  but  or- 
dered to  be  printed  by  the  members. 
It  bore  the  title,  "  A  Summary  View 
of  the  Rights  of  British  America," 
reached  England,  was  taken  up  by  the 
opposition,  and,  with  some  interpola- 
tions from  Burke,  passed  through  sev- 
eral editions.  Though  in  advance  of  the 
judgment  of  the  people,  who  are  slow 
in  coming  up  to  the  principles  of  great 
reforms,  this  "  View  "  undoubtedly  as 
sisted  to  form  that  judgment.  But 
so  slow  was  the  progress  of  opinion  at 
the  outset,  that,  at  the  moment  when 
this  paper  was  written,  only  a  few 
leaders,  such  as  Samuel  Adams  and 
Patrick  Henry,  were  capable  of  appre- 
ciating it.  A  few  years  after  wards, 


284 


THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 


and  it  would  have  been  accepted  as  a 
truism.  The  country  was  not  yet 
ready  to  receive  its  virtual  Declaration 
of  Independence.  The  people  had  to 
be  pricked  on  by  further  outrages. 
Theoretical  rebellion  they  had  no  eye 
for ;  they  must  feel  to  be  convinced. 
Jefferson's  paper  was  in  advance  of 
them,  by  the  boldness  of  its  historical 
positions,  and  the  plainness  of  its  lan- 
guage to  his  majesty — yet  its  array  of 
grievances  must  have  enlightened  many 
minds. 

The  Congress  of  1774  met,  but 
adopted  milder  forms  of  petition,  bet- 
ter adapted  to  the  moderation  of  their 
sentiments.  Meanwhile  committees  of 
safety  are  organizing  in  Virginia,  and 
Jefferson  heads  the  list  in  his  county. 
He  is  also  in  the  second  Virginia  Con- 
vention at  Richmond,  listening  to 
Patrick  Henry's  ardent  appeal  to  the 
God  of  Battles — "  I  repeat  it,  sir,  we 
must  fight !"  The  Assembly  adopted 
the  view  so  far  as  preparing  means  of 
defence,  and  that  the  students  of  events 
in  Massachusetts  began  to  think  meant 
war.  The  delegates  to  the  first  Con- 
gress were  elected  to  the  second,  and 
in  case  Peyton  Randolph  should  be 
called  to  preside  over  the  House  of 
Burgesses,  Thomas  Jefferson  was  to  be 
his  successor  at  Philadelphia.  The 
House  met,  Randolph  was  elected,  and 
Jefferson  departed  to  fill  his  place, 
bearing  with  him  to  Congress  the 
spirited  Resolutions  of  the  Assembly, 
which  he  had  written  and  driven 
through,  in  reply  to  the  conciliatory 
propositions  )f  Lord  North.  It  was  a 
characteristic  introduction,  immediate- 
ly followed  up  by  his  appointment  on 
the  committee  charged  to  prepare  a 


declaration  of  the  causes  of  taking  up 
arms,  Congress  having  just  chosep 
Washington  Commander-in-Chief  of  a 
national  army.  He  was  associated  in 
this  task  with  John  Dickinson,  to 
whose  timidity  and  caution,  respected 
as  they  were  by  his  fellow  members, 
he  deferred  in  the  report,  in  which, 
however,  a  few  ringing  sentences  of 
Jefferson  are  readily  distinguishable, 
among  them  the  famous  watchwords 
of  political  struggle — "  Our  cause  is 
just ;  our  union  is  perfect."  "  With 
hearts,"  the  document  proceeds,  "  for- 
tified with  these  animating  affections, 
we  most  solemnly,  before  God  and  the 
world,  declare,  that,  exerting  the  ut- 
most energy  of  those  powers  which 
our  beneficent  Creator  hath  graciously 
bestowed  upon  us,  the  arms  which  we 
have  been  compelled  by  our  enemies  to 
assume,  we  will,  in  defiance  of  every 
hazard,  with  unabated  firmness  and 
perseverance,  employ  for  the  preserva- 
tion of  our  liberties,  being  with  one 
mind  resolved  to  die  freemen  rathel 
than  live  slaves." 

This  was  the  era  of  masterly  state 
papers  ;  and  talent  in  composition  waa 
in  demand.  The  reputation  of  Jeffer- 
son in  this  line  had  preceded  him,  in 
the  ability  of  his  "  Summary  View," 
presented  to  the  Virginia  Convention, 
and  was  confirmed  by  his  presence. 
Nearly  a  year  passed — a  year  com- 
mencing with  Lexington  and  Bunker 
Hill,  and  including  the  military  scenes 
of  Washington's  command  around  Bos- 
ton, before  Congress  was  fully  ready  to 
pronounce  its  final  Declaration  of  In- 
dependence. When  the  time  came, 
Jefferson  was  again  a  member  of  that 
body.  The  famous  Resolutions  of  In 


THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 


285 


dependence,  in  accordance  with  pre- 
vious instructions  from  Virginia,  were 
mo/ed  Iby  Richard  Henry  Lee,  on  the 
seventh  of  June.  They  were  debated 
in  committee  of  the  whole,  and  pend- 
ing the  deliberations,  not  to  lose  time, 
a  special  committee  was  appointed  by 
ballot  on  the  eleventh,  to  prepare  a 
Declaration  of  Independence.  Jeffer- 
son had  the  highest  vote  and  stood  at 
the  head  of  the  committee,  with  John 
Adams,  Benjamin  Franklin,  Roger 
Sherman,  and  Robert  R.  Livingston. 
The  preparation  of  the  instrument  was 
entrusted  to  Jefferson.  "  The  com- 
mittee desired  me  to  do  it,  it  was  ac- 
cordingly done, "  says  his  Autobiogra- 
phy. The  draft  thus  prepared,  with  a 
few  verbal  corrections  from  Franklin 
and  Adams,  was  submitted  to  the  House 
on  the  twenty-eighth.  On  the  second 
of  July,  it  was  taken  up  in  debate, 
and  earnestly  battled  for  three  days, 
when  on  the  evening  of  the  last — the 
ever-memorable  fourth  of  July — it  was 
finally  reported,  agreed  to,  and  signed 
by  every  member  except  Mr.  Dickin- 
son. Some  alterations  were  made  in 
the  original  draft — a  phrase,  here  and 
there,  which  seemed  superfluous,  was 
lopped  off ;  the  king  of  Great  Britain 
was  spared  some  additional  severities, 
and  a  stirring  passage  arraigning  his 
majesty  for  complicity  in  the  slave 
trade  then  carried  on,  "  a  piratical  war- 
fare, the  opprobrium  of  infidel  powers," 
was  entirely  exscinded — the  denuncia- 
tion being  thought  to  strike  at  home 
as  well  as  abroad.  The  people  of 
England  were  also  relieved  of  the  cen- 
sure cast  upon  them  for  electing  tyran- 
nical parliaments.  With  these  omis- 
sions, the  paper  stands  substantially 


as  first  reported  by  Jefferson.  It  is 
intimately  related  to  his  previous  reso- 
lutions and  reports  in  Virginia  and 
Congress,  and  whatever  merit  may  be 
attached  to  it,  alike  in  its  spirit  and 
language,  belongs  to  him. 

Mr.  Jefferson  was  elected  to  the  next 
session  of  Congress ;  but,  pleading  the 
state  of  his  family  affairs,  and  desirous 
of  taking  part  in  the  formative  mea- 
sures of  government  now  arising  in 
Virginia,  he  was  permitted  to  resign 
He  declined,  also,  immediately  after 
an  appointment  by  Congress  as  fellow 
minister  to  France  with  Dr.  Franklin 
in  October,  he  took  his  seat  in  the  Vii 
ginia  House  of  Delegates,  and  com- 
menced  those  efforts  of  reform  with 
which  his  name  will  always  be  identi- 
fied in  his  native  State,  and  which  did 
not  end  till  its  social  condition  was 
thoroughly  revolutionized.  His  first 
great  blow  was  the  introduction  of  a 
bill  abolishing  entails,  which,  with  one 
subsequently  brought  in,  cutting  off 
the  right  of  primogeniture,  levelled  the 
great  landed  aristocracy  which  had 
hitherto  governed  in  the  country.  He 
was  also,  about  the  time  of  the  passage 
of  this  act,  created  one  of  the  commit- 
tee for  the  general  revision  of  the  laws, 
his  active  associates  being  Edmund 
Pendleton  and  George  Wythe.  This 
vast  work  was  not  completed  by  the 
committee  till  June,  1779,  an  interval 
of  more  than  two  years.  Among  the 
one  hundred  and  sixteen  new  bills  re- 
ported, perhaps  the  most  important 
was  one,  the  work  of  Jefferson,  that 
for  Establishing  Religious  Freedom, 
which  abolished  tithes,  and  left  all 
men  free  "  to  profess,  and  by  argument 
to  maintain,  their  opinions  in  matteri 


THOMAS   JEFFEKSON. 


of  religion,  and  that  the  same  shall  in 
no  wise  diminish,  enlarge,  or  affect 
their  civil  capacities."  A  concurrent 
act  provided  for  the  preservation  of 
the  glebe  lands  to  church  members. 
Jefferson  was  not,  therefore,  in  this  in- 
stance the  originator  of  the  after  spolia- 
tion of  the  ecclesiastical  property.  Of 
this  matter  Mr.  Randall  says :  "  Wheth- 
er Mr.  Jefferson  changed  his  mind, 
and  kept  up  with  the  demands  of  pop- 
ular feeling  in  that  particular,  we  have 
no  means  of  knowing.  We  remember 
no  utterance  of  his  on  that  subject, 
after  reporting  the  bills  we  have  de- 
scribed."* Another  important  subject 
fell  to  his  charge  in  the  statutes  affect- 
ing education.  He  proposed  a  system 
of  free  common  school  education,  plan- 
ned in  the  minutest  details ;  a  method 
of  reorganization  for  William  and 
Mary  College,  and  provision  for  a  free 
State  Library.  There  was  also  a  bill 
limiting  the  death  penalty  to  murder 
and  treason.  In  his  account  of  the  re- 
ception of  this  "  Revision,"  Mr.  Jeffer- 
son records :  "  Some  of  the  bills  were 
taken  out,  occasionally,  from  time  to 
time,  and  passed ;  but  the  main  body 
of  the  work  was  not  entered  on  by  the 
Legislature  until  after  the'  general 
peace,  in  1 785,  when,  by  the  unwearied 
exertions  of  Mr.  Madison,  in  opposi- 
tion to  the  endless  quibbles,  chicane- 
ries, perversions,  vexations,  and  delays 
of  lawyers  and  demi-lawyers,  most  of 
the  bills  were  passed  by  the  Legisla- 
ture, with  little  alteration." 

In  1779,  Mr.  Jefferson  succeeded 
Patrick  Henry  as  Governor  of  Virginia, 
falling  upon  a  period  of  administration 
requiring  the  military  defence  of  the 

*  Life  of  Jefferson,  I.  222. 


State,  less  suited  to  his  talents  than  the 
reforming  legislation  in  which  he  had 
been  recently  engaged.  Indeed,  he 
modestly  confesses  this  in  the  few  words 
he  devotes  to  the  subject  in  his  Auto- 
biography, where  he  says,  referring  to 
history  for  this  portion  of  his  career : 
"  From  a  belief  that,  under  the  pressure 
of  the  invasion  under  which  we  were 
then  laboring,  the  public  would  have 
more  confidence  in  a  military  chief,  and 
that  the  military  commander,  being 
invested  with  the  civil  power  also,  both 
might  be  wielded  with  more  energy, 
promptitude  and  effect  for  the  defence 
of  the  State,  I  resigned  the  administra- 
tion at  the  end  of  my  second  year,  and 
General  Nelson  was  appointed  to  suc- 
ceed me."  His  disposition  to  the  arts 
of  peace,  in  mitigation  of  the  calami- 
ties of  war,  had  been  previously  shown 
in  his  treatment  of  the  Saratoga  pris- 
oners of  war,  who  were  quartered  in 
his  neighborhood,  near  Charlottesville. 
He  added  to  the  comforts  of  the  men, 
and  entertained  the  officers  at  his  table, 
and  when  it  was  proposed  to  remove 
them  to  less  advantageous  quarters,  he 
remonstrated  with  Governor  Henry  in 
their  favor.  The  early  part  of  Jeffer- 
son's administration  was  occupied  with 
various  duties  connected  with  the  war, 
and  it  was  only  at  the  end,  in  the  inva 
sions  by  Arnold  and  Phillips,  in  1780, 
that  he  felt  its  pressure.  When  Rich- 
mond was  invaded  and  plundered,  he 
was  obliged  to  reconnoitre  the  attack, 
in  his  movements  about  the  vicinity, 
without  ability  of  resistance.  The 
finances  and  resources  of  defence  of  the 
State  were  in  the  most  lamentable  con- 
dition, and  it  remains  a  question  foi 
the  historian  to  conjecture  what  de 


THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 


287 


gj-ee  of  military  energy,  in  a  governor, 
would  have  been  effectual  to  create  an 
army  on  the  spur  of  the  moment,  and 
extort  means  for  its  support.  The 
depredations  of  Arnold  continued  till 
the  arrival  of  Cornwallis,  and  before 
his  exit  from  the  scenes  of  these  opera- 
tions at  Yorktown,  an  incident  occur- 
red which  has  been  sometimes  told  to 
Jefferson's  disadvantage,  though  with- 
out any  apparent  reason.  The  famous 
Colonel  Tarleton,  celebrated  for  the 
rapidity  of  his  movements,  was  dis- 
patched to  secure  the  members  of  the 
Legislature,  then  assembled  at  Char- 
lottesville.  Warning  was  given,  and 
the  honorable  gentlemen  escaped,  when 
it  was  proposed  to  capture  the  govern- 
or at  his  neigboring  residence  at  Mon- 
ticello.  He,  however,  also  had  intelli- 
gence, perceiving  the  approach  of  the 
enemy  from  his  mountain  height,  and, 
sending  his  wife  and  children  in  ad- 
vance to  a  place  of  safety,  rode  off 
himself  as  the  troopers  approached  to 
Carter's  Mountain.  At  this  time  his 
term  of  service  as  governor  had  expir- 
ed a  few  days.  Happily,  the  officer 
who  thus  visited  his  house  was  a  gen- 
tleman, and  his  papers,  books,  and 
other  property,  were  spared.  His 
estate  at  Elk  Hill,  on  James  River, 
did  not  fare  so  well.  Its  crops  were 
destroyed,  its  stock  taken,  and  the 
slaves  driven  off  to  perish,  almost  to  a 
man,  of  fever  and  suffering  in  the 
British  camp. 

Losses  like  these  he  could  bear  with 
equanimity;  not  so  the  inquiry,  which 
received  some  countenance  from  the 
legislature,  into  his  conduct  during  the 
invasion.  He  was  grieved  that  such 
an  implied  censure  should  be  even 


thought  of,  and  prepared  himself  to 
meet  it  in  person;  but  when  he  pre 
sented  himself  at  the  next  session,  con- 
senting to  an  election  for  the  express 
purpose,  there  was  no  one  to  oppose 
him,  and  resolutions  of  respect  and  con- 
fidence took  the  place  of  the  threatened 
attack.  He  had  another  cause  of  de- 
spondence at  this  time,  which  no  act 
of  the  legislature  could  cure.  His  wife, 
to  whom  he  was  always  tenderly  at- 
tached, was  daily  growing  more  feeble 
in  health,  and  gradually  approaching 
her  grave.  She  died  in  September, 
1782 — "torn  from  him  by  death,"  is 
the  expressive  language  he  placed  on 
her  simple  monument. 

The  illness  of  his  wife  had  prevented 
his  acceptance  of  an  appointment  in 
Europe,  to  negotiate  terms  of  peace 
immediately  after  the  termination  of 
his  duties  as  governor.  A  similar  office 
was  now  tendered  him — the  third  prof- 
fer of  the  kind  by  Congress — and,  look- 
ing upon  it  as  a  relief  to  his  distracted 
mind  as  well  as  a  duty  to  the  State,  he 
accepted  it.  Before,  however,  the  pre- 
parations for  his  departure  were  com- 
plete, arising  from  the  difficulties  then 
existing  of  crossing  the  ocean,  intelli- 
gence was  received  of  the  progress  of 
the  peace  negotiations,  and  the  voyage 
was  abandoned.  He  was  then  return- 
ed to  Congress,  taking  his  seat  in  No- 
vember, 1783,  at  Trenton,  the  day  of 
the  adjournment  to  Annapolis,  where 
one  of  his  first  duties,  the  following 
month,  was  as  chairman  of  the  Com- 
mittee which  provided  the  arrange- 
ments for  the  reception  of  Washington 
on  his  resignation  of  his  command. 

The  presence  of  Jefferson  in  any 
legislative  body  was  always  soon  felt, 


288 


THOMAS  JEFFEKSOK 


and  we  accordingly  find  him  in  the 
Congress  of  1784,  making  his  mark  in 
the  debates  on  the  ratification  of  the 
treaty  of  peace,  his  suggestions  on  the 
establishment  of  a  money  unit  and  a 
national  coinage,  which  were  subse- 
quently adopted — he  gave  us  the  deci- 
mal system  and  the  denomination  of 
the  cent;  the  session  of  the  North- 
western Territory  by  Virginia,  with 
his  report  for  its  government,  propos- 
ing names  for  its  new  States,  and  the 
exclusion  of  slavery  after  the  year  1800 ; 
and  taking  an  active  part  in  the  ar- 
rangements for  commercial  treaties 
with  foreign  nations.  In  the  last,  he 
was  destined  to  be  an  actor  as  well  as 
a  designer — Congress,  on  the  seventh 
of  May,  appointing  him  to  act  in  Europe 
with  Adams  and  Franklin,  in  accom- 
plishing these  negotiations.  This  time 
he  was  enabled  to  enter  upon  the  scene 
abroad,  which  had  always  invited  his 
imagination  by  its  prospects  of  new 
observations  in  art  and  science,  society 
and  government,  and  intimacy  with 
learned  and  distinguished  men.  A 
visit  to  Europe  to  an  ordinary  Ameri- 
can in  those  days,  was  like  passing  from 
a  school  to  a  university ;  but  Jefferson, 
though  he  found  the  means  of  knowl- 
edge unfailing  wherever  he  went,  being 
no  ordinary  man  but  a  very  extraordi- 
nary one,  carried  with  him  to  Europe 
more  than  he  could  receive  there.  In 
the  science  of  government  he  was  the 
instructor  of  the  most  learned ;  and,  in 
that  matter,  the  relations  of  the  old 
world  and  the  new  were  reversed. 
America,  even  then,  with  much  to  learn 
before  her  system  was  perfected,  was 
the  educator  of  Europe. 

Jefferson  took  with  him  his  oldest 


daughter,  Martha — his  family  consist 
ing,  since  the  death  of  his  wife,  of  three 
young  daughters  and  the  adopted  chil 
dren  of  his  friend,  Carr — with  whon: 
he  reached  Paris,  by  the  way  of  Eng 
land,  in  August.  There  he  found  Dr. 
Franklin,  with  whom  he  entered  on 
the  duties  of  his  mission,  and  whose 
friendship  he  experienced  in  an  intro- 
duction to  the  brilliant  philosophical 
society  of  the  capital.  His  position, 
also,  at  the  outset,  was  much  strength- 
ened with  these  savans  by  a  small  edi- 
tion which  he  printed  and  privately 
circulated  of  his  "  Notes  on  Virginia." 
The  book,  as  a  valuable  original  con- 
tribution to  the  knowledge  of  an  inter- 
esting portion  of  the  country,  at  a  tran- 
sition period,  has  been  always  treasur- 
ed. Its  observations  on  natural  history, 
and  descriptions  of  scenery,  are  of  val- 
ue ;  it  has  much  which  would  now  be 
called  enthnological,  particularly  in 
reference  to  the  Indian  and  the  black 
man ;  while,  in  style  and  treatment,  it 
may  be  studied  as  a  suggestive  index 
of  the  mind  and  tastes  of  the  author. 

In  the  summer  of  1785,  Dr.  Frank- 
lin took  his  departure  homeward,  retir- 
ing from  the  embassy  he  had  so  long 
and  honorably  filled,  and  Jefferson  re- 
mained as  his  successor.  His  return 
to  the  United  States  in  the  autumn  of 
1789,  grew  out  of  his  desire  to  restore 
his  daughters — a  second  one  had  join- 
ed him  in  Europe,  the  third  died  dur- 
ing his  absence — to  education  in  Amer- 
ica, and  to  look  after  his  private  af- 
fairs. A  leave  of  absence  was  accord- 
ingly granted  him,  with  the  expectation 
of  a  return  to  the  French  capital.  Be- 
fore reaching  home  he  found  a  letter 
from  President  Washington  awaiting 


THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 


289 


him,  tendering  him  the  office  of  Secre- 
tary of  State  in  the  new  government. 
The  proposition  was  received  with 
manifest  reluctance,  but  with  a  candid 
reference  to  the  will  of  the  President. 
The  latter  smoothed  the  way,  by  rep- 
resenting the  duties  of  the  office  as 
less  laborious  than  had  been  conceiv- 
ed, and  it  was  accepted.  At  the  end 
of  March,  1790,  he  joined  the  other 
members  of  the  administration  at  New 
York.  Then  began  that  separation  in 
politics,  which,  gradually  rising  to  the 
dignity  of  party  organization,  became 
known  as  Federalism  and  Republican- 
ism. Whatever  opinions  Jefferson 
might  entertain  of  men  or  measures, 
on  questions  of  practical  conduct,  he 
regarded  only  the  honor  and  welfare 
}f  his  country.  He  retired  at  the  end 
of  1793,  with  the  friendship  and  re- 
spect of  Washington  unbroken. 

The  simplicity  of  his  retirement  at 
Monticello  has  been  questioned  by 
those  who  have  been  accustomed  to 
look  upon  the  man  too  exclusively  in 
the  light  of  a  politician;  but  the  evi- 
dence brought  forward  by  his  biogra- 
pher, Mr.  Randall,  shows  that  the  pas- 
sion, while  it  lasted,  was  genuine.  In 
Jefferson's  heart  there  was  a  fund  of 
sensibility,  freely  exhibited  in  his  pri- 
vate intercourse  with  his  family.  He 
was  unwearied  in  the  cares  and  solici- 
tudes of  his  daughters,  his  adopted 
children,  and  their  alliances.  In  read- 
ing the  letters  which  passed  between 
them,  the  politician  is  forgotten:  we 
see  only  the  man  and  the  father.  Be- 
sides these  pleasing  anxieties,  he  had 
the  responsibilities  and  resources  of 
several  considerable  plantations;  his 
five  thousand  acres  about  Monticello, 
37 


alone,  as  he  managed  them,  with  their 
novel  improvements  and  home  manu- 
facturing operations,  affording  occupa- 
tion enough  for  a   single   mind.     He 
had,  too,  his  books  and  favorite  studies 
in  science  and  literature.     There  were, 
probably,  few  public  men  in  the  country 
who  like  him  read  the  Greek  drama- 
tists  in  the  original  with  pleasure.  What 
wonder,  then,  that  he  honestly  sought 
retirement  from  the  labors  and  strug- 
gles of  political  life,  becoming  every 
day  more   embittered   by  the  rising 
spirit  of  party  ?     But  the  law  of  Jef- 
ferson's mind  was  activity,  and  it  was 
no  long  time  before  he  mingled  again 
in  the  political  arena.    His  first  decided 
symptom   of   returning   animation   is 
found  by  his  biographer  in  his  sub- 
scription,  at    the    close   of    1795,    to 
"Bache's  Aurora."     He  was  no  longer 
content  with  "  his  solitary  Richmond 
newspaper."     After  this,  there  is  no 
more  thorough  "working  politician" 
in  the  country  than  Thomas  Jefferson. 
It  is  not  necessary  here  to  trace  his 
influence  on  every  passing  event.     We 
may  proceed  rapidly  to  his  reappear- 
ance in  public  life  as  Vice-President  in 
1797,  on  the  election  of  John  Adams, 
soon  followed  by  the  storm  of  party, 
attendant  upon  the  obnoxious  measures 
of  the  President  in  the  Alien  and  Se- 
dition Laws,  the  rapid  disintegration 
of  the  Federal  party  and  the  rise  of  the 
Republicans.     Out  of  the  stormy  con 
flict,  Jefferson^  at  the  next  election,  was 
elevated  to  the  Presidency.     The  v  :te 
stood  seventy-three  alike  for  himself 
and  Burr,  and  sixty-five  and  sixty-four 
respectively  for  Mr.  Adams  and  Mr. 
Pinckney.    As  the  Presidency  was  then 
given  to  the  one  who  had  the  highest 


290 


THOMAS  JEFFEKSON. 


vote,  and  the  Vice-Presidency  to  the  one 
next  below  him,  neither  being  named 
for  the  offices,  this  equality  threw  the 
election  into  the  House  of  Representa- 
tives. A  close  contest  then  ensued 
between  Jefferson  and  Burr  for  the 
Presidency,  which  was  protracted  for 
six  days  and  thirty-six  ballotings,  when 
the  former  was  chosen  by  ten  out  of 
the  sixteen  votes  of  the  States. 

One  of  the  early  measures  of  Jeffer- 
son's administration,  and  the  most  im- 
portant of  his  eight  years  of  office,  was 
the  acquisition  of  Louisiana  by  pur- 
chase from  France.  It  was  a  work 
upon  which  he  had  peculiarly  set  his 
heart.  From  the  first  moment  of  hear- 
ing that  the  territory  was  passing  from 
Spain  to  France,  he  dropped  all  polit- 
ical sympathy  for  the  latter,  and  saw  in 
her  possession  of  the  region  only  a 
pregnant  source  of  war  and  hostility. 
Not  content  with  the  usual  channel  of 
diplomacy  through  the  state  depart- 
ment, he  wrote  himself  at  once  to  Mr. 
Livingston,  the  minister  in  France,  urg- 
ing considerations  of  national  policy 
not  so  much  that  the  United  States 
should  hold  the  country,  as  that  the 
European  powers  should  relinquish  it. 
From  his  own  previous  discussions  with 
Spain,  he  understood  the  topic  well, 
and  his  zeal  was  now  equal  to  the  occa- 
sion. An  active  European  nation  of 
the  first-class  in  possession  of  the 
mouth  of  the  Mississippi,  was  utterly 
inadmissible  to  his  sagacious  mind ;  he 
saw  and  felt  the  fact  in  all  its  conse- 
quences. The  rapidity  of  his  conclu- 
sions and  his  patriotic  insight  were  hap- 
pily seconded  by  the  necessities  of  Napo- 
leon at  the  time,  and  Louisiana  became 
an  integral  part  of  the  Republic,  with 


the  least  expenditure  of  money  and  po< 
litical  negotiation.  The  turn  of  Euro- 
pean events  had  much  to  do  with  it — 
but  had  the  difficulty  been  prolonged, 
the  prescience  and  energy  of  Jefferson 
would,  there  is  every  reason  to  believe, 
have  been  prepared  to  cope  with  the 
issue.  The  expedition  of  Lewis  and 
Clarke,  in  exploration  of  the  western 
territory,  parallel  with  this  new  acqui- 
sition, was  planned  by  Jefferson,  and 
must  be  placed  to  the  credit,  alike  of 
his  love  of  science  and  patriotic  insight 
into  the  future  of  his  country.  The 
brilliant  acts  of  the  navy  in  the  Medi- 
terranean, in  conflict  with  the  Barbary 
powers  came  also  to  swell  the  triumphs 
of  the  administration,  and  Jefferaon, 
at  the  next  Presidential  election,  was 
borne  into  office,  spite  of  a  vigorous 
opposition,  by  a  vote  of  one  hundred 
and  sixty-two  in  the  electoral  college 
to  fourteen  given  to  Charles  Coteswortt 
Pinckney. 

The  main  events  of  this  second  ad- 
ministration were  the  trial  of  Burr  for 
his  alleged  western  conspiracy,  in  which 
the  President  took  a  deep  interest  in  the 
prosecution,  and  the  measures  adopted 
against  the  naval  aggressions  of  England 
which  culminated  in  the  famous  "  Em 
bargo,"  by  which  the  foreign  trade  of 
the  country  was  annihilated  at  a  blow, 
that  Great  Britain  might  be  reached 
in  her  commercial  interests.  It,  of 
course,  called  down  a  storm  of  opposi- 
tion from  the  remnants  of  Federalism 
in  the  commercial  States,  which  ended 
in  its  repeal  early  in  1809,  after  it  had 
been  in  operation  something  more  thar 
a  year.  Immediately  after,  the  presi 
dency  of  its  author  closed  with  his  seo 
ond  term,  leaving  the  country,  indeed, 


THOMAS  JEFFEKSON. 


291 


.in  an  agitated,  unsettled  state  in  refer- 
ence to  its  foreign  policy,  but  with 
many  elements  at  home  of  enduring 
prosperity  and  grandeur.  The  terri- 
tory of  the  nation  had  been  enlarged, 
its  resources  developed,  and  its  financial 
system  conducted  with  economy  and 
masterly  ability ;  time  had  been  gained 
for  the  inevitable  coming  struggle  with 
England,  and  though  the  navy  was  not 
looked  to  as  it  should  have  been,  it  had 
more  than  given  a  pledge  of  its  future 
prowess  in  its  achievements  in  the 
Mediterranean. 

Jefferson  was  now  sixty-six,  nearly 
the  full  allotment  of  human  life,  but 
he  was  destined  to  yet  seventeen  years 
of  honorable  exertion — an  interval 
marked  by  his  popular  designation, 
"the  sage  of  Monticello,"  in  which  as- 
perities might  die  out,  and  a  new  gen- 
eration learn  to  reverence  him  as  a 
father  of  the  State.  He  had  been  too 
much  of  a  reformer  not  to  suffer  more 
than  most  men  the  obloquy  of  party, 
and  he  died  without  the  true  Thomas 
Jefferson  being  fully  known  to  the 
public.  In  his  last  days  he  spoke  of 
the  calumny  to  which  he  had  been  sub- 
jected with  mingled  pride  and  char- 
itable feeling.  He  had  not  considered, 
he  said,  in  words  worthy  of  remem- 
brance, "  his  enemies  as  abusing  him ; 
they  had  never  known  him.  They 
had  created  an  imaginary  being  clothed 
with  odious  attributes,  to  whom  they 
had  given  his  name ;  and  it  was  against 
that  creature  of  their  imaginations 
they  had  levelled  their  anathemas." 
We  may  now  penetrate  within  that 
home,  even,  in  the  intimacy  of  his 
domestic  correspondence,  within  that 
breast,  and  learn  something  o^  the  man 


Thomas  Jefferson.  His  questioning 
turn  of  mind,  and  to  a  certain  extent, 
his  unimaginative  temperament,  led 
him  to  certain  vie^s,  particularly  in 
matters  of  religion,  which  were 
thought  at  war  with  the  welfare  of 
society.  But  whatever  the  extent  of 
his  departure,  in  these  things,  from  the 
majority  of  the  Christian  world,  he 
does  not  appear,  even  in  his  own  family, 
to  have  influenced  the  opinion  of 
others.  His  views  are  described,  by 
those  who  have  studied  them,  to  re- 
semble those  held  by  the  Unitarians. 
He  was  not  averse,  however,  on  occa- 
sion, to  the  services  of  the  Episcopal 
Church,  which,  says  Mr.  Randall,  "  he 
generally  attended,  and  when  he  did 
so,  always  carried  his  prayer-book,  and 
joined  in  the  responses  and  prayers 
of  the  congregation."  Of  the  Bible 
he  was  a  great  student,  and,  we  fancy 
derived  much  of  his  Saxon  strength 
of  expression  from  familiarity  with  its 
language. 

If  any  subject  was  dearer  to  his 
heart  than  another,  in  his  latter  days, 
it  was  the  course  of  education,  in  the 
organization  and  government  of  his 
favorite  University  of  Virginia.  The 
topic  had  long  been  a  favorite  one, 
dating  as  far  back  with  him  as  his  re- 
port to  the  Legislature  in  1779.  It 
was  revived  in  some  efforts  made  in 
his  county  in  1814,  which  resulted  in 
the  establishment  of  a  college  that  in 
1818  gave  place  to  the  projected  Uni- 
versity. Its  courses  of  instruction 
reflected  his  tastes,  its  government  was 
of  his  contrivance,  he  looked  abroad 
for  its  first  professors,  and  its  archi- 
tectural plans,  in  which  he  took  great 
interest,  were  mainly  arranged  by 


292 


THOMAS   JEFFERSON. 


him.  He  was  chosen  by  the  Board  of 
Visitors,  appointed  by  the  governor, 
its  rector,  and  died  holding  the  office. 
An  inscription  for  his  monument, 
which  was  found  among  his  papers  at 
bis  death,  reads:  "Here  lies  buried, 
Thomas  Jefferson,  author  of  the  Dec- 
laration of  American  Independence,  of 
the  Statute  of  Virginia  for  Religious 
Freedom,  and  Father  of  the  University 
of  Virginia." 

The  time  was  approaching  for  its  em- 
ployment, as  the  old  statesman  lingered 
with  some  of  the  physical  infirmities, 
few  of  the  mental  inconveniences  of 
advanced  life.  His  fondness  for  riding 
blood  horses  was  kept  up  almost  to  the 
last,  and  he  had  always  his  family,  his 
friends,  his  books — faithful  to  the  end 
to  the  sublimities  of  JEschylus,  the  pas- 
sion of  his  younger  days.  He  was 
much  more  of  a  classical,  even,  than  of 
a  scientific  scholar,  we  have  heard  it 
said  by  one  well  qualified  to  form  an 
opinion;  but  this  was  a  taste  which 
he  did  not  boast  of,  and  which,  happily 
for  his  enjoyment  of  it,  his  political 
enemies  did  not  find  out.  In  the  de- 
cline of  life,  when  debt,  growing  out 
of  old  encumbrances  and  new  expen- 
ses on  his  estates,  was  pressing  upon 
him,  these  resources  were  unfailing 
and  exacted  no  repayments.  His  pen, 
too,  ever  ready  to  give  wings  to  his 
thought,  was  with  him.  Even  in  those 
last  days,  preceding  the  national  an- 
niversary which  marked  his  death,  he 
wrote  with  his  wonted  strength  and 


fervor :  "  All  eyes  are  opened  or 
opening  to  the  rights  of  man.  The 
general  spread  of  the  light  of  science 
has  already  laid  open  to  every  view 
the  palpable  truth,  that  the  mass  of 
mankind  have  not  been  born  with 
saddles  on  their  backs,  nor  a  favored 
few  booted  and  spurred,  ready  to  ride 
them  legitimately,  by  the  grace  of 
God."  This  was  the  last  echo  of  the 
fire  which  was  wont  to  inspire  senates, 
which  had  breathed  in  the  early  coun- 
cils of  liberty,  which  had  kept  pace 
with  the  progress  of  the  nation  to  a 
third  generation.  A  few  days  after, 
at  noon  of  the  day  which  had  given 
the  Republic  birth,  to  the  music  of 
his  own  brave  words,  exactly  fifty 
years  after  the  event ;  in  full  conscious- 
ness of  his  ebbing  moments ;  with  tran- 
quillity and  equanimity,  passed  from, 
earth  the  soul  of  Thomas  Jefferson. 
His  old  comrade,  John  Adams,  lin- 
gered at  Braintree  a  few  hours  longer, 
thinking  of  his  friend  in  his  dying 
moments,  as  he  uttered  his  last  words : 
"Thomas  Jefferson  still  survives." 
They  were  too  late  for  fact,  but  they 
have  been  accepted  for  prophecy,  and 
in  this  spirit  they  are  inscribed  as  the 
motto  to  the  latest  memorial  of  him 
of  whom  they  were  spoken.  Thus,  on 
the  fourth  of  July,  1826,  passed  away 
the  two  great  apostles  of  American 
liberty ;  the  voice  which,  louder,  per- 
haps,  than  any  other,  had  called  foi 
the  Declaration  of  Independence,  and 
the  hand  that  penned  it. 


MARIA    EDGEWORTH. 


history  of  the  Edgeworths  in 
Ireland  ascends  to  the  reign  of 
Elizabeth,  when  two  brothers  of  the 
stock  left  England,  one,  Edward,  to 
become  Bishop  of  Down  and  Connor, 
the  other,  Francis,  succeeding  to  his 
brother's  property,  to  marry  an  Irish 
lady  and  establish  the  family  in  the 
country.  From  this  union,  in  the  ear- 
ly part  of  the  seventeenth  century,  Ma- 
ria Edgeworth  was  descended.  There 
appears  always  to  have  been  a  great 
deal  of  spirit  and  independence  in  the 
family,  with  unusual  daring  and  adven- 
ture. The  wife  of  Francis  Edgeworth, 
who  is  described  as  very  beautiful,  was 
the  daughter  of  a  baronet,  and,  desirous 
of  the  social  privileges  it  conferred,  when 
the  title  was  offered  to  her  husband, 
quarreled  with  him  for  not  accepting 
it.  She  then  left  him  to  attach  her- 
self to  Henrietta  Maria  on  the  conti- 
nent, and,  on  the  death  of  the  queen, 
returned,  not  to  her  family,  but  to  ex- 
pend a  large  fortune  in  founding  a  re- 
ligious house  in  Dublin.  Captain  John 
Edgeworth,  her  son,  married  a  lady  of 
Derbyshire,  who,  in  the  absence  of  her 
husband,  narrowly  escaped  death  in 
his  castle  of  Cranallagh,  when  it  was 
fired  and  plundered  by  the  rebels. 


Their  infant  son  would  have  been 
murdered  on  this  occasion  had  not  his 
life  been  saved  by  a  faithful  servant, 
who,  swearing  that  a  sudden  death 
was  too  good  for  him,  proposed  to 
"  plunge  him  -up  to  his  throat  in  a  bog 
hole  and  leave  him  for  the  crows  to 
pick  his  eyes  out."  The  suggestion 
was  accepted,  and  in  this  way  the 
child  was  concealed  till  he  could  be 
safely  carried  through  the  rebel  camp 
to  Dublin,  hid  in  a  pannier  under  eggs 
and  chickens.  Before  the  boy  grew 
up,  his  mother  died  and  his  father  was 
married  again  to  a  widow  lady  in  Eng> 
land,  of  whom  he  became  suddenly 
enamored  at  first  sight,  in  the  cathe- 
dral at  Chester,  while  travelling  on  his 
way  home  to  Ireland.  The  story  of  this 
engagement  is  somewhat  humorously 
told  by  their  descendant,  Richard  Lo- 
veil  Edgeworth,  who,  as  we  shall  see, 
had  naturally  a  sympathy  with  such 
affairs  of  the  heart.  The  lady,  it  ap 
pears,  when  seen  in  church,  had  a  full 
blown  rose  in  her  bosom.  As  she  was 
coming  out,  the  rose  fell  at  the  gallant 
captain's  feet.  "The  lady  was  hand- 
some— so  was  the  captain — he  took  up 
the  rose  and  presented  it  with  so  muct 
grace  to  Mrs.  Bridgman,  that,  in  con 

(291) 


294 


MARIA  EDGEWORTH; 


sequence,  they  became  acquainted  and 
were  soon  after  married."  The  lady 
had  a  daughter,  an  heiress,  by  her  first 
marriage ;  the  captain,  as  we  have  seen, 
a  son  by  his.  In  due  time,  and  that, 
as  is  not  uncommon  in  Ireland,  was  a 
very  early  time,  when  their  joint  ages 
amounted  to  thirty,  this  young  pair 
were  married.  The  mother,  being 
averse  to  the  match,  and  there  being  a 
law  against  running  away  with  an 
heiress,  the  young  lady  to  avoid  any 
suspicion  of  this  charge,  carried  her 
nusband  behind  her  on  horseback  to 
church.  This  precocious  couple  had 
the  recklessness  and  improvidence  of 
youth  and  old  Ireland.  "Upon  an 
excursion  to  England,"  we  are  told, 
fl  they  mortgaged  the  wife's  estate  in 
Lancashire,  and  carried  the  money  to 
London  in  a  stocking,  which  they  kept 
on  the  top  of  their  bed.  To  this  stock- 
ing, both  had  free  access,  and,  of  course, 
its  contents  soon  began  to  be  very  low. 
The  young  man  was  handsome  and  very 
fond  of  dress.  At  one  time,  when  he 
had  run  out  all  his  cash,  he  actually 
sold  the  ground  plot  of  a  house  in 
Dublin,  to  purchase  a  high-crowned 
hat  and  feathers,  which  was  then  the 
mode.  He  lived  in  high  company  at 
court.  Upon  some  occasion,  King 
Charles  the  Second  insisted  upon 
knighting  him.  His  lady  was  pre- 
sented at  court,  where  she  was  so 
much  taken  notice  of  by  the  gallant 
monarch,  that  she  thought  it  proper 
to  intimate  to  her  husband,  that  she 
did  not  wish  to  go  there  the  second 
time,  nor  did  she  ever  after  appear  at 
court,  though  in  the  bloom  of  youth 
and  beauty."  This  Lady  Edgeworth 
was  a  believers  in  fairies,  and  was  in 


consequence  imposed  upon  by  the  peo- 
ple of  her  neighborhood  in  Ireland, 
who  sent  children  by  night  with  lights, 
atter  the  fashion  of  the  Merry  Wives 
of  Windsor,  to  play  their  gambols  on  a 
mount  opposite  her  castle  of  Lissard. 
She  was  frightened  at  this,  but  she  was 
a  woman  of  courage  notwithstanding, 
as  an  anecdote,  related  of  her,  proves. 
"  While  she  was  living  at  Lissard,  she 
was,  on  some  sudden  alarm,  obliged  to 
go  at  night  to  a  garret  at  the  top  of  the 
house  for  some  gunpowder,  which  was 
kept  there  in  a  barrel.  She  was  follow- 
ed upstairs  by  an  ignorant  servant- 
girl,  who  carried  a  bit  of  candle, 
without  a  candlestick,  between  her 
fingers.  When  Lady  Edgeworth  had 
taken  what  gunpowder  she  wanted, 
had  locked  the  door,  and  was  half-way 
down  stairs  again,  she  observed  that 
the  girl  had  not  her  candle,  and  asked 
what  she  had  done  with  it;  the  girl 
recollected  and  answered,  that  she  had 
left  it  '  stuck  in  tlie  barrel  of  Hack  salt.1 
Lady  Edgeworth  bid  her  stand  still, 
and  instantly  returned  by  herself  to 
the  room  where  the  gunpowder  was; 
found  the  candle  as  the  girl  had  de- 
scribed— put  her  hand  carefully  un- 
derneath it — carried  it  safely  out,  and 
when  she  got  to  the  bottom  of  the 
stairs,  dropped  on  her  knees,  and 
thanked  God  for  their  deliverance.'  As 
he  grew  older,  her  husband  mended 
his  ways  and  his  fortunes.  The  eldest 
child  of  this  marriage  was  Francis 
Edgeworth,  colonel  of  a  loyal  regiment 
in  King  William's  time,  a  gallant  sol- 
dier and  a  spendthrift.  He  had  an 
extraordinary  passion  for  play.  "  One 
night,  after  having  lost  all  the  money 
he  could  command,  he  staked  his  wife's 


MARIA  EDGEWORTH:. 


295 


diamond  ear-rings,  and  went  into  an  ad- 
joining room,  where  she  was  sitting  in 
company,  to  ask  her  to  lend  them  to 
him.  She  took  them  from  her  ears,  and 
gave  them  to  him,  saying  that  she 
knew  for  what  purpose  he  wanted 
them,  and  that  he  was  welcome  to 
them.  They  were  played  for.  My 
grandfather  (Richard  Lovell  Edge- 
worth  is  the  narrator)  won  upon  this 
last  stake,  and  gained  back  all  he  had 
lost  that  night.  In  the  warmth  of  his 
gratitude  to  his  wife,  he,  at  her  desire, 
took  an  oath,  that  he  would  never 
more  play  at  any  game  with  cards  or 
dice.  Some  time  afterwards,  he  was 
found  in  a  hay-yard  with  a  friend, 
drawing  straws  out  of  the  hay-rick,  and 
betting  upon  which  should  be  the  long- 
est." This  gentleman  of  the  old  school 
left  a  son  who  became  a  lawyer,  and 
married  Jane  Lovell,  the  daughter  of 
a  Welsh  judge.  Of  this  marriage  was 
born,  one  of  eight  children,  Richard 
Lovell  Edgeworth,  the  father  of  Maria. 
This  Richard  Lovell  Edgeworth,  who 
came  into  the  world  at  Bath,  in  1744, 
proved  a  very  extraordinary  person- 
age. The  "  Memoirs "  which  he  has 
left  us  tell  us  all  about  him  and  much 
about  his  daughter,  who  was  intimate- 
ly associated  with  him  after  she 
grew  up,  in  his  literary  occupations. 
His  mother,  though  greatly  afflicted  in 
health,  was  cheerful  in  disposition  and, 
an  unusual  thing  for  the  sex  in  her  day, 
was  fond  of  reading.  She  read  to  her 
son,  in  his  childhood,  the  Roman  plays 
of  Shakespeare,  and  implanted  in  his 
mind  sound  maxims  for  the  conduct  of 
life.  Her  last  injunction  to  him  on  her 
death-bed  was,  "  My  son,  learn  how  to 
Bay  No !"  He  was  taught  Latin  by  a 


clergyman  who  had  been  the  instruc- 
tor of  the  poet  Goldsmith,  and  at  six- 
teen, entered  Trinity  College,  Dublin, 
where  he  appears  to  have  passed  his 
time  in  dissipation,  which  caused  hia 
removal  to  Oxford,  where  he  was  con- 
.signed  to  the  care  of  a  friend  of  hia 
father,  a  Mr.  Elers,  who  rejoiced,  in  hia 
residence  at  Black  Bourton,  in  the  pos- 
session of  several  pretty  daughters. 
From  what  we  have  seen  of  the  blood 
of  the  Edgeworths,  it  was  a  danger- 
ous position  for  a  youthful  scion  of 
the  house.  In  fact,  young  as  he  was, 
he  had  been  married  already — when 
he  was  twelve  or  fourteen — after  a 
dancing  frolic,  standing  up  with  hia 
partner  in  a  mock  ceremony  performed 
by  one  of  his  companions  in  a  white 
cloak  for  a  surplice,  and  with  the  key 
of  the  door  for  a  ring.  It  was  a  piece 
of  nonsense,  but  his  father  thought  it 
important  enough  to  have  it  annulled 
in  an  Irish  ecclesiastical  court.  This 
time  it  was  more  serious.  The  young 
Oxford  student  did  apply  himself  to 
his  studies,  and  was  at  the  same  time 
attentive  to  one  of  the  young  ladies, 
whom,  before  his  college  course  was 
finished,  he  ran  away  with  to  Gretna 
Green,  married,  and  by  her  had  a 
son  before  he  was  twenty.  This  affair 
broke  up  his  Oxford  residence,  and  sent 
him  back  to  Ireland,  where  he  passed 
a  year  dabbling  in  science  and  improv- 
ing a  turn  for  mechanics  in  the  con- 
struction of  an  orrery.  Returning  to 
England  with  the  intention  of  study- 
ing for  the  law,  he  took  up  his  resi- 
dence at  Hare  Hatch,  in  the  vicinity  of 
Reading,  in  Berkshire,  a  place  of  easy 
access  to  London.  Here  his  daughter 
Maria  was  born,  on  the  first  day  of  Jan- 


296 


MAKIA  EDGEWOKTH. 


uary,  1767.  Her  early  childhood  was 
passed  with  the  family  in  Oxfordshire, 
till  her  mother's  death,  six  years  after- 
ward,  in  1773.  During  this  time  va- 
rious incidents  were  happening  in  her 
father's  career  which  influenced  her  fu- 
ture education  and  character.  The 
most  important  of  these  was  his  falling 
in  with  the  social  literary  clique  which 
gathered  about  that  famous  blue  stock- 
ina:  of  her  time,  Miss  Anna  Seward.  at 

O  '  ' 

her  father's  residence — he  was  canon 
of  the  cathedral — in  the  Bishop's  pal- 
ace at  Lichfield.  One  of  the  leading 
members  of  this  circle  was  Dr.  Darwin, 
who  was  then  practicing  medicine  in 
the  city,  a  gentleman  of  great  intelli- 
gence and  benevolence,  destined  after- 
wards to  be  known  to  the  world  by  his 
poetic  and  philosophic  writings.  A  com- 
mon liking  for  mechanical  and  scientif- 
ic pursuits  brought  Darwin  and  Edge- 
worth  together.  They  first  met  at  the 
doctor's  house  in  Lichfield,  to  which 
Edgeworth  was  invited  as  a  guest ;  and 
by  the  doctor  he  was  introduced  to  Miss 
Seward.  It  was  quite  characteristic  of 
our  Irish  visitor  to  be  delighted  with 
the  lady  at  first  sight.  The  very  eve- 
ning after  his  arrival,  at  an  evening 
party  at  Darwin's,  in  the  midst  of  his 
impressive  attentions  to  Miss  Seward 
at  table,  he  was  suddenly  called  to  his 
senses  by  Mrs.  Darwin  proposing  the 
liealth  of  Mrs.  JEdgeworih,  a  personage 
whose  existence  her  husband  seemed 
on  all  occasions  when  he  could,  very 
ready  to  forget.  His  state  of  mind  to- 
wards that  lady  is,  indeed,  very  frank- 
ly confessed  in  his  "  Memoirs,"  where 
he  describes  her  as  "  prudent,  domestic, 
and  affectionate,  but  not  of  a  cheerful 
temper.  She  lamented  about  trifles; 


and  the  lamenting  of  a  female  with 
whom  we  live  does  not  render  home 
delightful."  He  suggests  to  be  sure  that 
there  was  a  touch  of  feminine  spite  in 
Mrs.  Darwin's  interruption.  Miss  Sew 
ard,  who  was  at  this  time  in  the  height 
of  her  charms,  having  been  her  rival  with 
the  doctor.  Escaping,  however,  for  the 
present,  the  seductive  beauties  of  Lich- 
field, he  returned  to  his  home  in  Berk- 
shire to  apply  himself  with  fresh  vigor 
to  his  ingenious  mechanical  contriv- 
ances and  the  education  or  rather  non- 
education  of  his  infant  son  after  the 
method  proposed  by  Rousseau. 

He  now  made  the  acquaintance  of 
a  personage  rather  more  notional  and 
extraordinary  than  himself.     This  was 
the  eccentric  Mr.  Thomas  Day,  the  au- 
thor of  that  ingenious  boy's  book, "  The 
Adventures  of  Sandford  and  Merton." 
He  was  a  man  of  great  integrity  and 
generosity,  well  versed  in  literature, 
of  constant  activity  of  mind,  and  great- 
ly given   to   metaphysics,  and,  being 
possessed  of  a  liberal  estate,  he  was 
enabled  very  much  to  have  his  own 
way.     He  had  views  of  his  own  on  all 
sorts  of  themes,  and  particularly  on 
the  subject  of  female  education.    Rude 
and  clumsy  in  his  own  person,  with  a 
countenance  ill-favored  from  the  small- 
pox, inattentive  to  or  ignorant  of  the 
refined  graces  of  life,  he  was  disposed 
to  resent  as  impertinent  or  injurious, 
the  usual  intercourse  of  fashionable  so- 
ciety.    With  little  of  the  passion  of 
love,  he  was  a  constant  attendant  upon 
women  with  a  sort  of  mathematical  af- 
fection.    The  life  of  a  woman  was.  in 
his  view,  to  be  worked  out  and  demon 
strated  like  a  problem.     Day  accom- 
panied Edgeworth  on  a  visit  to  hia 


MAEIA  EDGEWOKTH. 


.  297 


father  in  Ireland,  and  fell  in  love  with 
his  sister.  It  was  a  peculiarity  of  his 
attachments,  that  they  proceeded  to  a 
certain  extent  and  went  no  farther. 
The  lady  first  received  him  with  sus- 
picion and  distrust,  for  women  are  nat- 
urally aristocrats,  and  dislike  ultra  so- 
cial reformers ;  then  recognizing  in  him 
through  the  wonders  of  his  conversa- 
tion the  man  of  genius,  she  takes  pride 
in  his  attentions  and  amiably  devotes 
herself  to  metaphysics,  of  which  she 
soon  gets  tired,  and  there  the  matter 
ends.  This  is  in  general  the  natural 
history  of  Day's  love*  affairs.  There 
was  a  prospect  of  his  becoming  the 
brother-in-law  of  his  friend,  but  he 
did  not.  Despairing  of  making  any- 
thing of  the  spoiled  daughters  of  civil- 
ization, he  determined  to  form,  a  woman 
for  himself,  and,  to  have  a  choice  in  the 
result,  he  chose  two  for  the  experiment. 
He  selected  these  girls  from  a  number 
of  orphans,  one  of  them  from  the 
Foundling  Hospital  in  London,  adopt- 
ed both,  and  set  to  work  to  educate 
them  with  a  view  of  making  one  of 
them  his  wife.  One  he  named  Sabrina 
Sidney,  in  compliment  to  his  favorite 
river,  the  Severn,  and  to  his  favorite 
political  philosopher,  Algernon  Sid- 
ney ;  the  other,  after  the  chaste  Roman 
matron,  Lucretia.  They  were  at  the 
age  of  eleven  or  twelve,  healthy,  and 
of  promising,  cheerful  disposition.  In 
pursuance  of  his  plan,  to  separate  them 
from  the  sophistications  of  England,  he 
took  them  to  France,  where  their  ig- 
norance of  the  language  of  the  country, 
which  he  purposely  took  no  pains  to 
remove,  left  them  more  to  his  direction. 
His  main  instrument  of  education  was 
his  continual  conversation  and  advice. 
38 


When  he  got  back  to  England,  he 
made  up  his  mind  that  Lucretia  was 
so  incorrigibly  stupid  as  to  be  worth 
no  further  attention;  so  he  gave  her  a 
dowry  of  a  few  hundred  pounds,  which 
soon  procured  her  a  small  shopkeeper 
-for  a  husband,  with  whom  she  lived 
happily,  and  became  the  mother  of  a 
numerous  family.  Sabrina,  still  re- 
maining on  his  hands,  he  took  her  to 
his  new  residence  at  Stow  Hill,  in  the 
vicinity  of  Lichfield. 

Meanwhile,  Edgeworth,  by  the  death 
of  his  father,  became  possessed  of  the 
family  estate  in  Ireland;  gave  up  in 
consequence  all  further  thoughts  of 
the  law,  and  was  free  to  follow  out  his 
scientific  pursuits.  He  still  kept  up 
his  residence  in  England,  and  pleas- 
antly passed  the  Christmas  season  of 
1770  with  his  friend  Day  at  Lichfield. 
Here  he  found  a  new  object  for  his 
affections  in  Miss  Honora  Sneyd,  the 
daughter  of  a  gentleman  of  Stafford- 
shire, who,  after  the  death  of  her  mother 
had  found  a  home  with  the  Sewards. 
She  was  young,  beautiful  and  intelli- 
gent. "  I  was  six  and  twenty,"  writes 
Edgeworth,  "and  now,  for  the  first 
time  in  my  life,  I  saw  a  woman  that 
equalled  the  picture  of  perfection 
which  existed  in  my  imagination.  I 
had  long  suffered  much  from  the  want 
of  that  cheerfulness  in  a  wife,  without 
which,  marriage  could  not  be  agreeable 
to  a  man  of  such  a  temper  as  mine.  I 
had  borne  this  evil,  I  believe,  with  pa- 
tience; but  my  not  being  happy  at 
home,  exposed  me  to  the  danger  of 
being  too  happy  elsewhere."  He  con- 
sequently fell  into  a  very  ardent  ad 
miration  of  Miss  Sneyd,  and  must  have 
been  greatly  disturbed  bv  the  arrival 


298 


MAEIA  EDGEWORTH. 


of  a  gentleman  who  bad  recently  fallen 
m  love  with  her  while  on  a  visit  to 
Matlock,  in  Derbyshire.  This  was  no 
other  than  the  elegant  and  accomplish- 
ed Major  Andre,  who  had  not  then  en- 
tered the  army,  but,  following  in  the 
footsteps  of  his  father,  was  engaged  in 
mercantile  business.  Though  assisted 
by  Miss  Seward,  to  whom  he  addressed 
several  sprightly  letters  inspired  by 
his  passion,  he  made  little  progress  in 
his  suit.  A  young  clerk  without  for- 
tune was  not  in  a  position  to  marry; 
BO  Andre  went  to  the  war  in  America, 
and,  not  unwept,  met  his  inglorious 
fate  on  the  Hudson.  Soon  another 
lover  of  Honora  appears  in  Edge- 
worth's  friend  Day,  who  for  the  time 
is  forgetful  of  the  now  blooming  Sa- 
brina,  whom  he  had  placed  at  a  board- 
ing-school. Day  talks  and  converses, 
is  charmed  with  the  intellect  of  the 
lady,  and  finally  the  siege  is  ended  in 
articles  of  capitulation  in  a  proposal 
covering  several  sheets  of  paper,  stipu- 
lating for  retirement  from  the  world, 
exclusive  personal  devotion,  in  fine, 
the  relinquishment  of  every  thing  for 
the  instructive  conversation  of  Thomas 
Day.  To  this  the  lady  replied  in  a 
letter  equally  logical,  enforcing  the 
rights  of  her  sex,  expressing  her  satis- 
faction with  the  world  around  her,  and 
declining  to  leave  it  for  his  scientific 
embrace.  Upon  the  receipt  of  this, 
Day  was  taken  ill  for  some  time,  and 
Dr.  Darwin  was  called  in  to  bleed  him 
and  administer  brotherly  philosophic 
consolation.  After  his"  recovery  he 
paid  his  addresses  to  the  lady's  sister 
Elizabeth,  and  succeeded  so  far  as  to 
engage  her  in  a  course  of  reading  which 
he  pointed  out.  Honora  being  freed 


from  her  lovers,  Edge  worth  revived 
his  attachment  to  her,  which,  in  pure 
self-sacrifice  had  been  held  in  abeyance 
during  the  courtship  of  his  friend  Day 
The  latter  saw  its  force  and  its  dan- 
ger—  for  poor  Mrs.  Edgeworth  was 
yet  alive — and  her  husband  sought  the 
only  way  of  safety  open  to  him,  in 
flight.  Day  accompanied  him  to  France, 
where  Edgeworth  passed  some  time  at 
Lyons,  where  he  undertook,  in  connec- 
tion with  the  authorities,  the  feat  of 
enlarging  the  bounds  of  the  city  by  a 
mechanical  division  of  the  river  Rhone. 
He  had  his  son  with  him,  a  boy  of 
seven  or  eight,  whose  education,  after 
the  manner  of  Rousseau,  was  develop- 
ing in  him  a  very  self-reliant,  head- 
strong, conceited  disposition.  The 
freedom  of  nature  proved  an  excellent 
thing  for  the  body;  but  the  moral 
nature  wanted  guidance  and  repres- 
sion. Under  the  influence  of  his  at- 
tachment for  Elizabeth  Sneyd,  Day, 
following  for  once  a  lady's  advice,  was 
submitting  himself  at  Lyons  to  the 
tortures  of  a  French  posture  master, 
who  engaged  in  a  vain  attempt  to  in- 
struct him  in  dancing,  and  bring  his 
knees,  by  a  cruel  machine,  into  a  straight 
line.  "  I  could  not,"  writes  Edgeworth, 
"  help  pitying  my  philosophic  friend, 
pent  up  in  durance  vile  for  hours  to- 
gether, with  his  feet  in  the  stocks,  a 
book  in  his  hand  and  contempt  in  his 
heart." 

Mrs.  Edgeworth  joined  her  husband 
at  Lyons  for  a  few  months,  returning 
to  England  to  die  in  child-birth,  in 
March,  1773.  Upon  news  of  this  event, 
Edgeworth  hastily  returned  to  Eng- 
land, renewed  his  addresses  to  Honora 
Sneyd,  and  was  married  to  her  in  the 


MAEIA  EDGEWOKTH. 


290 


catliedral  at  Lichfield  in  the  ensuing 
month  of  July.  As  for  Day,  notwith- 
standing his  devotion  to  the  graces  in 
France,  he  was  rejected  on  his  return 
by  the  fair  Elizabeth,  and  was  about 
to  many  Sabrina,  whose  education  was 
now  accomplished,  when  an  indiscre- 
tion on  her  part  in  wearing  certain 
Ions:  sleeves  or  some  handkerchief  dis- 

O 

tasteful  to  him,  alienated  his  mind 
from  her  utterly.  With  this  new  vacu- 
um in  his  affections,  he  at  last  fell  in 
with  a  maiden  lady,  Miss  Milnes,  whose 
understanding  and  acquirements  had 
gained  her  the  name  of  Minerva.  She 
had  also  his  desiderata  in  a  wife,  white 
and  large  arms,  and  wore  long  petti- 
coats ;  her  only  defect,  in  the  eye  of 
our  philosopher,  was  her  fortune,  which 
he  affected  to  despise.  They  were  mar- 
ried, however,  and  entered  upon  the 
free  and  uninterrupted  enjoyment  of 
an  unlimited  series  of  philosophical 
conversations.  Their  life  was  a  happy 
one  for  many  years,  till  Day  fell  a  vic- 
tim to  his  benevolence.  Dreading:  the 

O 

brutality  practiced  by  horse-breakers, 
he  had  trained  a  favorite  horse  himself 
by  gentle  means.  The  horse  took  fright 
when  Day  was  riding  out;  he  was 
thrown  and  instantly  killed  by  the 
fall.  His  wife  survived  him  two  years. 
Sabrina,  after  residing  some  time  in  the 
country,  was  married  to  Mr.  Bicknel, 
the  author  in  conjunction  with  Day  of 
a  once  popular  poem  entitled  "The 
Dying  Negro,"  wrhich  Miss  Edge  worth 
predicted  would  "  last  as  long  as  manly 
and  benevolent  hearts  exist  in  Eng- 
land." Bicknel  was  an  early  friend 
of  Day,  and  had  been  with  him  and 
assisted  in  his  selection  of  Sabrina  when 
he  made  choice  of  her  from  a  number 


of  orphans  for  adoption.  Nothing  is 
more  singular  than  the  matrimonial 
developments  of  Edgeworth  and  his 
friends.  Bicknel  died  after  three  years 
of  wedded  life,  leaving  Sabrina  unpro- 
vided for,  with  two  infant  sons.  Miss 
Edgeworth  characteristically  writes  of 
the  event:  "Some  thought  her  more 
unhappy  for  the  felicity  she  had  tran- 
siently enjoyed.  But  this  was  not 
my  father's  doctrine.  Two  years  of 
happiness  he  thought  a  positive  good 
secured,  which  ought  not  to  be  a  subject 
of  regret,  and  should  not  embitter  the 
remainder  of  life.  Indeed,  the  system 
of  rejecting  present  happiness,  lest  it 
should,  by  contrast,  increase  the  sense 
of  future  pain,  would  fatally  diminish 
the  sum  of  human  enjoyment ;  it  would 
bring  us  to  the  absurdity  of  the  stoic 
philosophy,  which,  as  Swift  says, 
'would  teach  us  to  cut  off  our  feet, 
lest  we  should  want  shoes.' r 

On  .the  marriage  of  Edgeworth  to 
Honora  Sneyd,  Maria,  then  six  years 
old,  was  taken  with  them  to  the  pa- 
ternal seat  at  Edgeworth  Town  in  Ire- 
land, which,  thenceforth,  with  a  few 
intervals  of  absence,  became  the  fam- 
ily residence.  It  required,  however, 
some  years'  application  of  the  inventive 
genius  of  Edgeworth  to  make  it  an 
enjoyable  home.  After  three  years 
passed  at  this  place  in  retirement, 
Edgeworth  visited  his  English  friends, 
and  established  himself  for  a  time  at 
a  house  in  Hertfordshire.  His  daugh- 
ther,  Maria,  meanwhile,  was  placed  at 
school  at  Derby  with  a  schoolmistress 
who  doubtless  found  her  a  very  bright 
and  intelligent  pupil;  for  the  educa- 
tion of  his  children  was  a  hobby  with 
Edgeworth,  and  he  never  lost  an  op 


300 


MARIA  EDGEWOETH. 


portunity  of  improving  their  infant 
minds.  A  year  or  two  after  this,  her 
Btep-mother,  Honora,  fell  into  a  con- 
sumption, which  terminated  in  her 
death  in  May,  1780.  A  letter  written 
by  Edgeworth  to  Maria  on  this  event, 
exhibits  the  turn  of  his  mind  in  the 
advisory  method  he  had  already  formed 
in  directing  her  education.  It  indi- 
cates also  a  certain  maturity  in  the 
child  of  thirteen  to  whom  it  was  ad- 
dressed :  "  My  dear  daughter — At  six 
o'clock  on  Sunday  morning  your  ex- 
cellent mother  expired  in  my  arms. 
She  now  lies  dead  beside  me,  and  I 
know  I  am  doing  what  would  give  her 
pleasure,  if  she  were  capable  of  feeling 
anything,  by  writing  to  you  at  this 
time  to  fix  her  excellent  image  in  your 
mind.  .  .  .  Continue,  my  dear 
daughter,  the  desire  which  you  feel  of 
becoming  amiable,  prudent  and  of  use. 
The  ornamental  parts  of  a  character, 
with  such  an  understanding  as  yours, 
necessarily  ensue :  but  true  judgment 
and  sagacity  in  the  choice  of  friends, 
and  the  regulation  of  your  behavior, 
can  be  had  only  from  reflection  and 
from  being  thoroughly  convinced  of 
what  experience  teaches  in  general  too 
late,  that  to  be  happy  we  must  be 
good." 

In  her  last  illness  Honora  advised 
her  husband  to  marry  her  sister  Eliza- 
beth, and,  to  do  Edgeworth  credit,  he 
lost  no  time  in  obeying  Hs  wife's  dy- 
ing request.  "  Nothing,"  writes  Edge- 
worth  in  his  Memoirs,  with  his  usual 
philosophy  and  candor,  "is  more 
erroneous  than  the  common  belief,  that 
a  man  who  has  lived  in  the  greatest 
happiness  with  one  wife,  will  be  the 
most  averse  to  take  another.  On  the 


contrary,  the  loss  of  happiness,  which 
he  feels  when  he  loses  her,  necessarily 
urges  him  to  endeavor  to  be  again 
placed  in  a  situation  which  had  con 
stituted  his  former  felicity.  I  felt 
that  Honora  had  done  wisely,  and 
from  a  thorough  knowledge  of  my 
character,  when  she  had  advised  me 
to  marry  again,  as  soon  as  I  could 
meet  with  a  woman  who  would  make  a 
good  mother  to  my  children  and  an 
agreeable  companion  to  me.  She 
had  formed  an  idea,  that  her  sister 
Elizabeth  was  better  suited  to  me 
than  any  other  woman ;  and  thought 
that  I  was  equally  well  suited  to  her." 
The  matter,  therefore,  was  soon  ar- 
ranged with  Miss  Elizabeth  Sneyd, 
who,  happily,  as  we  have  seen,  had  not 
been  too  deeply  committed  in  her  re- 
ception of  the  attentions  of  the  phil- 
osophic Mr.  Day.  Edgeworth  had  the 
advantage  of  being  quite  as  much  of 
a  philosopher  and  a  great  deal  more  of 
the  man  of  the  world.  Another  sui- 
tor, to  be  sure,  had  succeeded  Day  in 
the  affections  of  the  lady  ;  but  he  had 
fortunately  gone  abroad,  and  though 
Elizabeth  pleaded  this  attachment  and 
said,  as  Edgeworth  himself  informs  us, 
that  he  was  the  last  man  she  should 
have  thought  of  for  a  husband,  and,  in 
concert  with  English  opinion,  was  em« 
barrassed  at  the  idea  of  marrying  so 
near  a  relative,  there  was  but  a  short 
courtship  before  the  wedding  was  per 
formed.  There  was  a  slight  hitch  in 
the  affair,  however.  At  the  last  mo- 
ment, when  the  parties  were  assembled 
in  the  church  at  Scarborough,  the  cler- 
gyman, frightened  by  a  letter  which 
he  had  received, — written  probably  by 
some  stickler  for  marriage  according 


MARIA  EDGEWORTH. 


301 


to  the  Levitical  degrees,  for  the  coun- 
try around  seems  to  have  been  consid- 
erably agitated  by  this  threatened  in- 
fringement of  the  canon, — was  delicate- 
ly excused  from  going  on  with  the  cer- 
emony. The  couple  then  betook 
themselves  to  London,  where  on  Christ- 
mas day,  1780,  about  six  months  after 
the  death  of  Honora,  they  were  mar- 
ried at  St.  Andrew's  church,  Holborn. 
The  jilted  and  philosophic  Day  came 
to  the  assistance  of  his  friend  and  was 
present  on  the  occasion. 

Maria  was  now  promoted  to  a  fash- 
ionable school  "  Establishment  "  in 
London  kept  by  a  Mrs.  Davis,  who 
gave  her  the  benefit  of  an  elaborate 
system,  of  gymnastics,  excellent  mas- 
ters putting  her  through  all  the  usual 
tortures  of  back  boards,  iron  collars 
and  dumb-bells,  with  the  unusual  one 
of  being  swung  by  the  neck  to  draw 
out  the  muscles  and  increase  the  growth, 
which  turned  out  a  signal  failure,  for 
the  little  girl  became  a  small  woman 
and  so  continued  to  the  end  of  her 
days.  She  was  taught,  however,  to 
dance  well,  which  was  one  of  the  ac- 
complishments of  her  father,  and  was 
quite  an  adept  in  the  execution  of 
Italian  and  French  exercises,  writing 
them  off  for  the  whole  quarter  at  once, 
which  gave  her  the  more  time  for 
amusing  reading.  While  her  school- 
fellows were  playing  she  would  be 
completely  absorbed  and  unconscious 
of  the  uproar  around  her,  in  the  per- 
usal of  some  favorite  volume.  She 
also,  at  this  time,  kept  her  fellow- 
boarders  awake  at  night  by  her  enter- 
taining stories.  After  about  two 
years  of  this  school  life  in  London,  at 
the  age  of  fifteen  she  was  taken  with 


her  father  and  new  stepmother  to  the 
old  home  In  Ireland.  The  estate  was 
in  disorder,  and  so  was  the  whole  coun- 
try, socially  and  politically.  Edge- 
worth  on  his  arrival  was  plunged  into 
a  most  distressing  sea  of  Irish  affairs 
—the  house  at  Edgeworth  Town  gone 
to  ruin,  needing  rebuilding  and  repairs, 
the  relations  of  landlord  and  tenant 
in  inextricable  hostility  and  confusion, 
criminations  and  re-criminations  all 
around  him,  a  people  to  educate,  riot 
and  rebellion  in  the  national  atmosa 
phere.  A  landowner  like  Edgeworth 
was  also  a  magistrate.  Under  these 
circumstances  even  his  resources  of 
philosophy  and  ingenuity  were  taxed 
to  the  uttermost.  But  he  succeeded 
in  educing  order  from  the  chaos  around 

O 

him.  At  once  firm  and  self-sacrificing, 
a  strict  observer  of  justice  and  impar- 
tiality, he  pressed  no  undue  advan 
tages ;  showed  his  sagacity  in  conform- 
ing to  the  laws  of  political  economy 
in  the  avoidance  of  unnecessary  restric- 
tions; exhibited  generosity,  and  was 
no  doubt  assisted  by  his  wit  and  turn 
for  humor  in  gaining  from  the  tenantry 
about  him,  the  highest  compliment  an 
Irish  laborer  can  pay.  He  was  pro- 
nounced "  a  real  gentleman."  His 
daughter  Maria  became  a  kind  of  sec- 
retary to  him  in  these  affairs,  and  gath- 
ered thus  early  many  an  instructive 
hint  for  her  future  volumes.  In  the 
continuation  of  her  father's  "Autobiog- 
raphy "  or  "  Memoirs,"  which  she  takes 
up  at  this  period,  we  have  a  most  in- 
teresting narrative  of  her  youthful  days 
in  Ireland.  "  I  was  with  him,"  she 
writes,  "  constantly,  indlwas  amused 
and  interested  in  seeing  how  he  made 
his  way  through  complaints,  petitions 


302 


MARIA  EDGEWOETH. 


and  grievances,  with  decision  and  de- 
spatch ;   he,  all  the  time  in  good  hu- 
nior   with    the    people,  and  they  de- 
lighted with   him;   though   he   often 
rated  them  roundly,'  when  they  stood 
before  him  perverse  in  litigation,  help- 
less in  procrastination,  detected  in  cun- 
ning, or  convicted  of  falsehood.     They 
saw  into  his  character,  almost  as  soon 
as  he  understood  theirs.     The  first  re- 
mark which  I  heard  whispered  aside 
among  the  people,  with  congratulatory 
looks  at  each  other,  was — '  His  honor, 
anyway,  is  good  pay  !' ':     In  the  Edge- 
worth  family,  and  it  was  an  important 
part  of  the  instruction  ever  going  on, 
the  children  were  taken  in  as  confi- 
dants in  all  the  business  and  affairs  of 
the   house.     His   "building  operations 
and  various  scientific  inventions  exer- 
cised their  faculties ;  and  with  a  knowl- 
edge of  things  he  introduced  them  to 
the  poetic  and  imaginative  creations  of 
the  great   artists.     "He  took  delight 
himself,"  says  his  daughter,  "  in  ingen- 
ious fictions,  and  in  good  poetry;  he 
knew  well  how  to  select  what  would 
amuse  and  interest  young  people ;  and 
he  read  so  well,  both  prose  and  poetry, 
both  narrative  and  drama,  as  to  delight 
his  young  audience,  and  to  increase 
the  effect  upon  their  minds  of  the  in- 
terest of  any  story,  or  the  genius  of 
any  poet.     From  the  Arabian  Tales  to 
Shakspeare,   Milton,   Homer  and  the 
Greek  tragedians,  all  were  associated  in 
the  minds  of  his  children  with  the  de- 
light of  hearing  passages  from  them 
first   read  by  their  father."     The   in- 
fluence of  society,  outside  of  the  family, 
was  slight  at  this  early  period  of  their 
residence  in  Ireland.     Yet  Edgeworth 
had  a  friend,  Lord  Longford,  at  Paken- 


ham  Hall,  twelve  miles  distant,  valued 
for  his  wit  and  humor;  and  as  his 
daughter  grew  up  the  company  there 
and  at  Castle  Forbes,  the  seat  of  the 
Earl  of  Granard,  afforded  her  opportii- 
nities  for  the  best  social  intercourse. 
A  cultivated  clergyman  named  Brooke, 
related  to  the  author  of  "  The  Fool  of 
Quality,"  lived  in  the  neighborhood, 
and  added  to  the  common  stock  of  the 
household  an  enthusiasm  for  classical 
learning. 

Maria  was  early  marked  out  for  an 
author.  When  she  wTas  at  her  first 
school  at  Derby,  shortly  after  her 
mother's  death,  her  father  writes  to 
her,  "  I  beg  that  you  will  send  me  a 
tale  about  the  length  of  a  '  Spectator, 
upon  the  subject  of  Generosity;  it 
must  be  taken  from  history  or  romance, 
and  must  be  sent  the  day  or  night 
after  you  receive  this,  and  I  beg  you  will 
take  some  pains  about  it."  The  story 
was  written  and  was  admired,  being 
pronounced  very  much  better  than  one 
produced  at  the  time  on  the  same 
theme  as  a  rival  effprt  by  a  young  gen- 
tleman from  Oxford.  This  was  Maria 
Edge  worth's  first  written  story.  Un- 
fortunately for  the  amusement  of  her 
readers,  it  has  not  been  preserved. 
As  soon  as  she  was  settled  at  Edge- 
worth  Town,  her  father  set  her  to  trans- 
latino-  Madame  de  Genlis'  "  Adele  et 

o 

Theodore,"  of  which  she  had  completed 
one  volume  when  Holcrof  t's  version  ap- 
peared and  rendered  the  continuance  of 
her  work  useless  for  publication.  After 
this  some  years  passed  before  we  hear 
of  any  further  attempt  at  authorship. 
Her  next  efforts  leading  in  this  direc- 
tion were  in  common  with  her  father, 
and  grew  out  of  his  plans  of  educa 


EDGEWOKTH. 


303 


tion.  It  was  his  custom  to  keep  a  reg- 
ister of  observations  and  facts  relative 
to  Ins  children,  in  which  he  was  assist- 
ed by  his  wife  Elizabeth,  as  he  had 
been  by  his  wife  Honora.  When  his 
daughter  Maria  grew  up  she  was  also 
employed  in  this  way.  Besides  these 
she  wrote,  for  her  own  amusement  and 
improvement,  accounts  of  his  instruc- 
tive conversations,  with  the  questions 
and  explanations  and  answers  of  the 
children.  A  favorite  idea  of  her  fa- 
ther had  been  to  facilitate  the  early 
mental  and  moral  improvement  of 
children  by  the  composition  of  books 
suited  to  en^as^e  their  attention.  As 

o    o 

early  as  1778  he  began  something  of 
this  kind  with  his  wife  Honora.  The 
story  of  Harry  and  Lucy,  afterwards 
incorporated  in  Miss  Edgeworth's 
"  Early  Lessons,1'  was  then  written 
and  printed,  though  not  published. 
Mr,  Day  being  consulted,  was  so  pleas- 
ed with  the  idea  that  he  composed 
"  Sandford  and  Merton,"  which  he  at 
first  designed  as  a  short  story  to  be 
inserted  in  his  friend's  book.  Thirteen 
years  afterward  we  find  Maria  writing 
her  second  story,  "  The  Bracelets,"  with 
others  of  the  same  class,  which  she 
subsequently  published.  In  these  she 
was  guided  by  her  father,  whom  she 
constantly  consulted.  The  consulta- 
tions ended  in  a  joint  literary  partner- 
ship. In  1795  her  first  work  appeared, 
"Letters  for  Literary  Ladies,"  -growing 
out  of  her  recollections  of  Day's  remon- 
strances against  female  authorship, 
when  she  was  translating  Madame  de 
Geulis,  and  of  her  father's  reply.  The 
"  Parent's  Assistant,"  that  admirable 
collection  of  juvenile  stories,  so  well 
calculated  to  arrest  the  attention  of 


the  young,  stored  as  they  are  with  sense 
and  exciting  sensibility,  appeared  the 
following  year.  In  1798  her  first  joint 
publication  with  her  father,  the  work 
entitled  "Practical  Education,"  was 
issued,  a  series  of  essays  on  the  art 
of  teaching  in  the  various  branches  of 
instruction.  Of  this  she  wrote  the 
greater  part. 

When  this  appeared  Ireland  was  in 
the  throes  of  revolution,  and  Edgewo/th 
was  taking  to  himself  a  fourth  wife. 
The  health  of  Mrs.  Edgeworth  had 
long  been  delicate ;  like  her  sister,  she 
became  consumptive,  and  the  disease 
ended  her  life  in  November,  1797. 
Edgeworth  was  now  a  man  of  fifty- 
three,  and  the  lady  upon  whom  he 
next  fixed  his  attention  had  attained 
little  more  than  half  that  period ;  in- 
deed he  had  first  noticed  her  on  a  cas- 
ual introduction  to  her  father  when 
she  was  a  child  of  but  six  years  old  and 
he  a  man  of  thirty.  He  can  hardly, 
as  in  the  case  of  his  other  early  mar- 
riage acquaintances,  have  had  any 
expectation  of  wedlock  at  that  time.  He 
met  the  father,  the  Rev.  Dr.  Beaufort, 
occasionally  afterwards  in  the  course 
of  his  scientific  pursuits,  and  when 
"  Parents'  Assistant  "  was  published, 
was  shown  some  designs  for  the  work 
sketched  by  the  daughter.  He  criti- 
cised them  very  freely,  and  the  lady 
took  the  censure  in  good  part,  which 
gave  him  a  favorable  opinion  of  hei 
understanding.  So  that  when  she 
visited  Edgeworth  Town  with  her 
family  in  1798,  Edgeworth  in  the 
words  of  his  daughter  Maria,  "  had  an 
opportunity  of  discerning  that  she 
possessed  exactly  the  temper,  abilities 
and  disposition,  which  would  ensure 


304  

the  happiness  of  his  family  as  well  as 
his  own,  if  he  could  hope  to  win  her 
affections."  This  task  he  soon  accom- 
plished, and  thus  announced  the  event 
in  a  letter  to  his  friend  Dr.  Darwin : 
"  I  am  going  to  be  married  to  a  young 
lady  of  small  fortune  and  large  accom- 
plishments,— compared  with  my  age, 
much  youth  (not  quite  thirty),  and 
more  prudence — some  beauty,  more 
sense — uncommon  talents,  more  un- 
common temper — liked  by  my  family, 
loved  by  me.  If  I  can  say  all  this 
three  years  hence,  shall  not  I  have 
been  a  fortunate,  not  to  say  a  wise 
man?"  The  marriage  again  turned 
out  well,  for  Edgeworth  was  not  only  a 
very  rational  theorist,  but  a  highly 
practical  follower  of  his  own  advice. 
At  any  rate  the  lady  made  him  a  good 
wife  for  the  nineteen  remaining  years 
of  his  life ;  and  what  he  was  equally 
to  be  congratulated  upon,  his  loving 
daughter  Maria  was  pleased  and  hap- 
py under  the  new  family  arrangement. 
After  an  extraordinary  interview  with 
her  father,  in  which  he  laid  his  mind 
and  heart  open  to  her,  she  signified 
her  acceptance  of  the  coming  mother- 
in-law  in  a  letter  addressed  to  her  full 
of  cordial  pleasantry,  in  which  she 
complimented  a  union  deepened  in  its 
affection  by  the  cultivation  of  the  un- 
derstanding, and  promised  herself  to 
be  gratefully  exact  en  belle  fillc,  con- 
cluding with  a  playful  allusion  to  her 
own  petite  figure.  "  As  for  me,  you  see, 
my  intentions,  or  at  least  my  theories, 
are  good  enough ;  if  my  practice  be 
but  half  as  good,  you  will  be  content, 
will  you  not  \  But  theory  was  born 
in  Brobdignag  and  practice  in  Lilli- 
put.  So  much  the  better  for  me?  The 


MAKIA  EDGEWORTH. 


lady  to  whom  this  letter  was  address- 
ed was  a  year  or  so  younger  than  its 
writer.  The  marriage  thus  amicably 
settled  took  place  at  Dublin  the  last 
day  of  May,  1798,  six  months  after  the 
decease  of  the  third  wife.  Again 

The  funeral  bak'd  meats 
Did  coldly  furnish  forth  the  marriage  tables. 

These  brilliant,  rapid  matrimonial 
performances  of  Edgeworth  recall 
to  us  the  humors  of  that  delightful 

O 

work  of  English  fiction,  the  "  Adven 
tures  of  John  Buncle,"  which  Hazlitt 
called  "The  English  Eabelais "— John 
Buncle,  who  passes  with  the  utmost 
enthusiasm  of  sorrow  and  affection 
from  the  embrace  of  one  delightful 
lady  to  another,  all  equally  attractive 
and  refined,  formed  for  love  and  learn- 
ing, with  charms  of  person  rivalled 
only  by  the  accomplishments  of  the 
mind. 

"  Castle  Rackrent,"  the  first  of  Misa 
Edgeworth's  novels  in  which  she  de- 
picted the  motley  life  of  her  country 
people  as  it  was  exhibited  about  her, 
followed  "  The  Parents'  Assistant "  in 
1800.  It  soon  reached  a  second  edition, 
was  translated  into  German,  and  was 
everywhere  received  with  favor.  It 
was  original  in  its  subject,  forcible  in 
its  delineation  of  character,  and  enliv- 
ened by  a  captivating  humor — a  hap- 
py exchange  for  the  lifeless  twaddle 
and  empty  sentimentality  of  the  circu- 
lating library  novels  which  constituted 
the  stock  in  trade  of  fiction  of  the  time. 
It  had  the  rare  merit  of  truthfulness  as 
a  picture  of  actual  life  and  manners,  re- 
cording as  it  did,  the  first  vivid  impres- 
sions of  the  rude  society,  in  the  midst 
of  which  the  author  had  been  sudden 
ly  thrown.  It  was  the  next  year  sue- 


MARIA  EDGEWORTH. 


305 


ceeded  by  another  novel,  "  Belinda,"  in 
which  the  story  of  Virginia  and  Clar- 
ence Hervey  was  suggested  by  the 
matrimonial  experiment  of  Mr.  Day 
in  the  education  of  Sabriua. 

In  1802,  a  second  partnership  work 
of  the  father  and  daughter  appeared 
having  both  their  names  on  the  ti- 
tle page,  the  "  Essay  on  Irish  Balls." 
The  first  design  of  this  book,  Miss 
Edgeworth  tell  us  in  the  "Memoirs," 
was  her  father's: — "Under  the  sem- 
blance of  attack,  he  wished  to  show 
the  English  public  the  eloquence,  wit 
and  talents  of  the  lower  classes  of  peo- 
ple in  Ireland.  Working  zealously 
upon  the  ideas  which  he  suggested, 
sometimes,  what  was  spoken  by  him, 
was  afterwards  written  by  me  ;  or 
when  I  wrote  my  first  thoughts,  they 
were  corrected  and  improved  by  him ; 
so  that  no  book  was  ever  written  more 
completely  in  partnership.  On  this, 
as  on  most  subjects,  whether  light  or 
serious,  when  we  wrote  together,  it 
would  now  be  difficult,  almost  impos- 
sible, to  recollect,  which  thoughts 
originally  were  his,  and  which  were 
mine.  All  passages,  in  which  there 
are  Latin  quotations  or  classical  allu- 
sions, must  be  his  exclusively,  because 
I  am  entirely  ignorant  of  the  learned 
languages.  The  notes  on  the  Dublin 
shoe-black's  metaphorical  language,  I 
recollect,  are  chiefly  his."  As  the  story 
itself  is  brief,  we  may  reproduce  it 
here  as  a  specimen  of  the  humor  of 
the  book,  referring  the  reader  to  the 
work  itself  for  Edgeworth's  full  ex- 
planatory comments.  One  shoe-black 
playing  with  another  at  pitch  farthing, 
had  a  small  paving  stone  thrown  at 
him,  and  returns  the  assault  by  plung- 
39 


ing  his  knife  into  his  companion'sbreast. 
The  blade  was  stamped  with  the  name 
of  Lamprey,  an  eminent  Dublin  cutler. 
The  survivor  in  this  affray  gives  the  fol- 
lowing account  of  it  in  court  to  the 
judge — "  Why,  my  lord,  as  I  was  going 
past  the  Royal  Exchequer,  I  meets  Bil- 
ly— 'Billy,'  says  I,  'will  you  sky  a 
copper  ?' — 'Done,'  says  he — '  Done,'  says 
I — and  done  and  done's  enough  be- 
tween two  jantlemen.  With  that  I 
ranged  them  fair  and  even  with  my 
hook-em-snivey — up  they  go — '  Music !' 
says  he — '  Skull !'  says  I — and  down  they 
come  three  brown  mazzards.  '  By  the 
holy  you  fleshed  'em,'  says  he.  '  You  lie,7 
says  I — With  that  he  ups  with  a  lump 
of  a  two  year  old  and  let's  drive  at  me — 
I  outs  with  my  bread  earner,  and  gives 
it  him  up  to  Lamprey  in  the  bread-bas. 
ket."  This  is  pure  slang,  but  it  is  slang, 
as  Edgeworth  argues,  of  a  highly  imag- 
inative character,  and  the  exercise  of 
the  imagination  fertile  with  poetry  is 
the  Irishman's  apology  for  the  absurdi- 
ties into  which  it  occasionally  leads 
him.  The  shoe-black's  brief  story  is 
fanciful  and  figurative  throughout. 
The  sublimity,  for  instance,  of  "sky- 
ing "  so  insignificant  a  thing  as  a  cop 
per;  Music,  a  brilliant  generalization 
for  the  harp  on  the  Irish  half -penny; 
the  oath,  "by  the  holy,"  which  writ- 
ten out  at  large,  would  be  "by  the 
holy  poker  of  hell,"  which  wakes  up 
all  Dante's  Inferno ;  the  "  lump  of  a 
two  year  old,"  a  grazing  metaphor  for 
a  stone  transferred  from  the  relative 
size  of  a  calf  to  an  ox.  "  I  have  heard," 
says  Maria,  "  my  father  tell  that  story 
with  all  the  natural,  indescribable  Irish 
tones  and  gestures,  of  which  written 
language  can  give  but  a  faint  idea. 


306 


MAKIA  EDGEWOETH. 


He  excelled  in  imitating  the  Irish  be- 
cause he  never  overstepped  the  modes- 
ty or  the  assurance  of  nature.  He 
mocked  exquisitely  the  happy  confi- 
dence, the  shrewd  wit  of  the  people, 
without  condescending  to  produce  ef- 
fect by  caricature.  He  knew  not  only 
their  comic  talents,  but  their  powers  of 
pathos ;  and  often  when  he  had  just 
heard  from  them  some  pathetic  com- 
plaint, he  has  repeated  it  to  me  while 
the  impression  was  fresh."  The  "  Es- 
say "  is  a  kind  of  miscellaneous  repro- 
duction of  all  the  various  elements  of 
Irish  wit  and  humor,  with  several  long- 
er stories  of  pathetic  interest  as  well. 
The  title  of  the  book  was  the  occasion 
of  a  humorous  incident.  A  gentleman 
interested  in  the  improvement  of  the 
breed  of  cattle,  seeing  the  advertisement 
of  the  work,  sent  for  it,  and  as  Miss 
Edgeworth  tells  us,  "was  rather  con- 
founded by  the  appearance  of  the  clas- 
sical bull  at  the  top  of  the  first  page, 
which  I  had  designed  from  a  gem,  and 
when  he  began  to  read  the  book,  he 
threw  it  away  in  disgust :  he  had  pur- 
chased it  as  secretary  to  the  Irish  Ag- 
ricultural Society."  Sydney  Smith  on 
its  appearance,  reviewed  the  book  in 
the  "  Edinburgh,"  with  kindred  humor, 
complimenting  "  Edgeworth  and  Co.," 
on  their  inimitable  Irish  painting,  their 
mastery  of  the  pathetic,  and  the  service 
they  were  doing  to  their  country  in 
bringing  forward  the  excellent  quali- 
ties of  the  Irish.  Of  Edgeworth  him- 
self he  says,  catching  an  insight  into  his 
character  from  his  manner  of  writing, 
he  "  seems  to  possess  the  sentiments  of 
an  accomplished  gentleman,  the  infor- 
mation of  a  scholar,  and  the  vivacity  of 
a  tint-rate  harlequin.  He  is  fuddled 


with  animal  spirits,  giddy  with  <xmsti 
tutional  joy ;  in  such  a  state  he  must 
have  written  on  or  burst.  A  discharge 
of  ink  was  an  evacuation  absolutely  ne- 
cessary, to  avoid  fatal  and  plethoric 
congestion." 

In  the  autumn  of  1802,  Miss  Edge- 
worth  accompanied  her  father  with 
other  members  of  the  family,  in  a  tour 
on  the  continent,  visiting  Belgium  and 
France.  They  made  the  acquaintance 
of  many  celebrities  of  the  day,  Madame 
Kecamier,  Madame  De  Genlis,  La 
Harpe,  Kosciusko,  and  others,  and  of 
one  who  would  have  been  more  than 
an  acquaintance,  a  M.  Edelcrantz,  an  un- 
exceptionable Swedish  gentleman,  who 
fell  in  love  with  Maria,  proposed  to  her, 
and  would  have  been  accepted,  had  not 
the  marriage  involved  a  change  of  res- 

o  o 

idence  to  Stockholm.  Sacrificing  her 
affections  to  what  she  considered  the 
call  of  duty  at  home,  Miss  Edgeworth 
refused  this  offer,  but  it  left  its  im- 
press upon  her  heart.  "  It  lets  in  a 
flood  of  light,"  says  one  of  her  reviewers, 
"  upon  those  passages  of  her  writings 
which  inculcate  the  stern  control  of  the 
feelings. — the  never-ceasing  vigilance 
with  which  prudence  and  duty  are  to 
stand  sentinel  over  the  heart.  She  had 
actually  undergone  the  hard  trials  she 
imposes  and  describes.  They  best  can 
paint  them  who  can  feel  them  most. 
Caroline  Percy,  in  l  Patronage,'  control- 
ling her  love  for  Count  Altenberg  ia 
Maria  Edgeworth  subduing  her  love  for 
the  Chevalier  Edelcrantz." 

Edgeworth's  visit  to  Paris  was  in 
terrupted  by  an  order  to  leave  the  city 
from  the  government.  He  was  sup- 
posed to  be  a  brother  of  the  Abbe 
Edgeworth,  the  confessor  of  Louis 


MAEIA  EDGEWOETH. 


30  < 


XVI,  who  attended  him  on  the  scaf- 
fold. The  Abb'1  was  of  the  same  stock, 
a  descendant  of  the  old  Bishop  of  Down 
and  Connor,  and  great  grandson  of 
Captain  Edgeworth,  mentioned  at  the 
beginning  of  this  narrative.  When 
the  relationship  was  cleared  up,  the 
order  was  withdrawn;  but  the  short 
peace  of  Amiens  was  coming  to  a  con- 
clusion, and  Edgeworth  hurried  away 
just  in  time  to  escape  detention  during 
the  long  remainder  of  the  Napoleonic 
wars. 

On  the  return  to  Edo-eworth  Town, 

O  7 

the  production  of  new  tales  and  stor- 
ies from  the  pen  of  Miss  Edgeworth 
proceeded  apace.  "Popular  Tales" 
were  issued  in  1804,  and  several  of  the 
novelettes,  "Emilie  de  Coulan^es," 

7  O  / 

"Madame  De  Fleury, "  and  "Ennui," 
commenced,  which  afterwards  were 
published  in  the  series  of  "Tales  of 
Fashionable  Life,  "  in  1809  and  1812. 
Of  the  origin  of  "  Patronage, "  publish- 
ed in  1813,  we  have  an  account  in 
the  "  Memoirs. "  It  grew  out  of  a  story 
told  by  her  father  in  1787,  for  the 
amusement  of  Mrs.  Elizabeth  Edge- 
worth,  when  she  was  recovering  from 
an  illness,  and  was  invented  by  him  as 
he  carried  it  on  from  evening;  to  eve- 

O 

ning.  Maria  thought  it  too  good  to  be 
lost,  and  wrote  it  out  from  recollec- 
tion as  the  "  History  of  the  Freeman 
Family. "  The  plan,  she  writes,  "  found- 
ed on  the  story  of  two  families,  one 
making  their  way  in  the  world  by  in- 
dependent efforts,  the  other  by  mean 
arts,  and  by  courting  the  great,  was  long 
afterwards  the  groundwork  of  '  Patron- 
age. '  The  character  of  Lord  Oldbor- 
ou^h  was  added,  but  most  of  the  oth- 

O  ' 

ers  remained  as  my  father  originally  i 


described  them :  his  hero  and  heroine 
were  in  greater  difficulties  than  mine, 
more  in  love,  and  consequently  more 
interesting,  and  the  whole  story  was 
infinitely  more  entertaining. " 

A  visit  to  London  with  the  family, 
in  1813,  enlarged  the  circle  of  Miss 
Edgeworth's  acquaintance  with  the 
most  cultivated  society  of  the  metrop- 
olis, including  Miss  Fox,  the  Misses 
Berry,  Miss  Catharine  Fanshaw,  Mrs 
Siddons  and  others  distinguished  for 
intellect  and  refinement.  Lord  Byron 
met  the  Edgeworths  at  this  time  at 
Lady  Davy's  and  has  recorded  his  im 
pressions  of  Edgeworth :  "  A  fine  old 
fellow  of  seventy,  but  not  looking 
fifty,  nor  forty-eight  even,  of  a  clarety, 
elderly,  red  complexion,  active,  brisk 
and  endless.  He  talked  loud  and  long, 
but  seemed  neither  weakly,  nor  de- 
crepit, and  hardly  old. "  His  mental 
activity  in  society  was  so  superabund- 
ant that  he  was  considered  a  bore,  and 
Byron  is  said  to  have  proposed,  what 
he  attributes  to  Moore,  the  formation 
of  a  "  Society  for  the  Suppression  of 
Edgeworth."  Of  his  daughter,  he 
writes :  "  She  was  a  nice  little  unas- 
suming '  Jeannie-Deans-looking  body, ' 
as  we  Scotch  say ;  and  if  not  handsome, 
certainly  not  ill-looking.  Her  conver- 
sation was  as  quiet  as  herself.  One 
would  never  have  guessed  she  could 
write  her  name ;  whereas,  her  father 
talked,  not  as  if  he  could  write  noth- 
ing else,  but  as  if  nothing  else  was 
worth  writing."  In,  Miss  Berry's  jour- 
nal of  this  period  there  is  some  mention 
of  Miss  Edgeworth  at  Lady  Davy's,  also, 
probably  at  the  very  party  at  which 
Byron  met  her.  "  She  is  very  small, " 
writes  Miss  Berry,  "  with  a  counte 


808 


MARIA  EDGEWOBTH. 


nance  which  promises  nothing  at  first 
sight,  or  as  one  sees  her  in  society.  She 
has  very  winning  manners;"  and, 
again,  a  fortnight  after,  on  calling 
upon  her  at  her  father's :  "  The  little 
woman  is  always  amiable,  always  nat- 
ural, intelligent  and  sensible." 

New  tales,  "  Harrington  "  and  "  Or- 
mond,"  with  "  Thoughts  on  Bores,"  ap- 
peared a  few  years  after  this,  in  1817, 
the  year  of  Kichard  Lovell  Edgeworth's 
death.     The  latter  part  of  his  life  was 
spent  as  usual  in  scientific  studies  and 
experiments,  and  the  theory  and  prac- 
tice of  education,  for  the  exercise  of 
which,  he  had  ample  scope  in  the  de- 
velopment  of  his   children  at  home. 
Writing  in  his  seventy-second  year  a 
preface  for  a  "  Manual  of  Education," 
which  he  contemplated  as  a  final  em- 
bodiment of  his  views,  as  a  legacy  to 
his  family,  he  says :  "  Since  l  Practical 
Education'  was   written,   Providence 
has  blessed  me  with  six  children  by  my 
present  wife,  in  addition  to  twelve  that 
I  had  before.     I  have  attended  with 
care  to  their  education,  which  has  been 
entirely  domestic.     ...     I  wish  to 
prove  to  them  that  pains  have  been 
taken  to  give  them  moral  habits,  gen- 
erous  sentiments,  kind   tempers   and 
easy  manners."     In  this  he  had  suc- 
ceeded, and  surely  it  was  a  noble  result 
of  a  well-spent  life.     His  irrepressible 
activity  was,  upon  the  whole,  well  di- 
rected.    It  continued  to  the  end.     For 
several  years  before  his  death  he  was 
troubled  with  failing  sight,  a  great  pri- 
vation to  a  man  of  study ;  but  he  bore 
it  with  cheerfulness.     His  last  letters 
to  his  family  are  instinct  with  the  old 
spirit,   recording    his   impressions    in 
youth  anil  throughout  life  from  worthy 


sentiments  in  books,  noticing  his  son's 
Memoirs  of  the  Abbe  Edgeworth,  and 
telling  his  wife's  mother  that,  if  Ma- 
ria's tales  ("  Harrington "  and  "  Or 
mond "),  soon  to  issue  from  the  press, 
fail  of  succeeding  with  the  public,  she 
will  hear  of  his  hanging  himself.  The 
latest,  addressed  to  Lady  Romilly,  dic- 
tated to  Maria  Edgeworth  but  five 
days  before  his  death,  shows  unabated 
powers  of  intellect.  "  I  suffer  consider- 
able pain,"  he  says,  "  and  almost  con- 
stant sickness;  and  yet  my  mind  re- 
tains its  natural  cheerfulness.  I  enjoy 
the  charms  of  literature,  the  sympathy 
of  friendship  and  the  unbounded  grat- 
itude of  my  children.  .  .  In  a  few 
days  I  hope  you  will  receive  Maria's 
new  Tales.  I  do  acknowledge  that  I 
set  a  high  value  upon  them.  They 
have  cheered  the  lingering  hours  of  my 
illness ;  and  they  have — I  speak  liter- 
ally— given  me  more  hours  of  pleasure 
during  my  confinement  than  could  well 
be  imagined  from  the  nature  of  my  ill 
ness."  In  this  spirit  this  brave  man 
departed.  He  died  at  Edgeworth 
Town,  in  his  seventy-fourth  year,  the 
13th  of  June,  1817. 

The  first  literary  occupation  of  Miss 
Edgeworth,  after  her  father's  death, 
was  the  completion  of  the  Memoirs  so 
often  cited  in  this  narrative.  The 
second  of  the  two  volumes  which  com- 
pose the  work,  is  entirely  from  her 
pen.  The  work  was  published  in  1820. 
After  its  completion,  Miss  Edgeworth 
visited  France  in  company  with  two 
of  her  younger  sisters,  and  after  en- 
joying the  hospitalities  of  the  best 
literary  circles  of  Paris,  where,  in  the 
changes  of  fortune,  the  family  connec- 
tion with  the  Abbe  Edgeworth  was  no 


MAKIA  EDGEWORTH. 


309 


longer  a  hindrance  but  a  friendly  in- 
fluence, they  proceeded  in  an  interest- 
ing tour  in  Switzerland  under  the 
guidance  of  Dumont,  the  intimate 
friend  of  Bentham.  Resuming  her 
literary  occupations  on  her  arrival  at 
home,  she  returned  to  her  old  province 
of  instruction  of  the  young  in  the 
publication  of  "Rosamond,"  a  sequel 
to  "  Early  Lessons,"  in  1822,  followed 
by  "  Harry  and  Lucy,"  in  1825.  In  the 
meantime,  she  made  occasional  journeys 
to  London,  mingling  as  usual  in  the 
best  literary  society,  and  in  the  sum- 
mer of  1823,  paid  a  visit  to  Sir  Walter 
Scott,  of  which  there  are  several  in- 
teresting notices  in  his  Memoirs  and 
Correspondence.  Scott  returned  this 
visit  on  his  journey  in  Ireland,  two 
years  afterward,  in  1825,  when  he 
passed  several  days  at  Edgeworth 
Town,  delighted  with  the  atmosphere 
of  respect,  and  the  rural  prosperity 
with  which  Miss  Edgeworth  and  the 
family  were  surrounded. 

The  latest  of  Miss  Edgeworth's  lar- 
gest works,  "  Helen,"  a  novel,  was  pub- 
lished in  1834,  when  the  author  was 
sixty-seven,  and,  compared  with  the 
best  of  her  kindred  productions,  the 
"Tale^  of  Fashionable  Life,"  exhibits 
no  falling  off  in  power  or  interest. 
One  common  purpose  runs  through  all 
her  productions  of  this  class,  and  a  like 
success  attends  them.  They  belong  to 
a  school  of  fiction  of  which  the  end 
and  aim  is  the  amelioration  of  daily 
life,  the  art  of  making  people  happy 
in  society  and  in  themselves.  Other 
writers  have  taken  a  higher  flight, 
some  have  more  deeply  sounded  the 


depths  of  passion,  but  in  the  philoso- 
phy of  every-day  life,  Miss  Edgeworth 
has  had  no  superior.  She  has  been 
charged  with  too  exclusive  a  pursuit 
of  utility;  but  this  cannot  be  consid- 
ered a  reproach,  when  we  consider  her 
education  and  how  necessary  this  com- 
mon-sense usefulness  was  to  the  peo- 
ple about  her,  and  what  it  accomplish- 
ed for  them.  In  this,  she  may  have 
been  somewhat  limited,  but  there  are 
enough  other  writers,  of  higher  aims, 
perhaps,  to  supply  the  deficiency.  It 
is  enough  that  her  writings  often  sup- 
ply what  is  wanting  in  theirs.  The 
world  is  not  composed  of  one  class  of 
people,  and  a  good  library  is  not  made 
up  of  the  works  of  a  single  author. 
Her  books,  with  all  their  limitations, 
cannot  and  ought  not  to  be  neglected. 
It  is  the  well  deserved  praise  of  their 
author,  in  the  words  of  her  critic,  Jef- 
frey, to  have  "  combined  more  solid 
instruction  with  more  universal  enter- 
tainment, and  given  more  pract^al 
lessons  of  wisdom  with  less  tedious- 
ness  and  less  pretension,  than  any 
other  writer  with  whom  we  are  ac- 
quainted." 

Her  last  literary  publication  was 
"  Orlandino,"  a  tale  for  children,  pub- 
lished by  Messrs.  Chambers,  in  1847. 
Two  years  later,  with  her  faculties  still 
unimpaired,  in  a  cheerful  old  age,  she 
was  taken  suddenly  ill  on  the  22d  of 
May,  1849,  and  expired  within  a  few 
hours,  attended  by  the  step-mother 
whom  she  had  welcomed  to  her 
father's  house,  and  with  whom  she 
had  lived  happily  through  so  many 
subsequent  years. 


FRIEDRICH    SCHILLER 


CHRISTOPH  FRIED- 
RICH  SCHILLER,  the  associate 
in  friendship  and  companion  in  fame 
of  the  poet  Goethe,  came  into  the 
world  ten  years  later  than  this  his 
great  brother  author  of  Germany,  and 
left  it  some  twenty-seven  years  earlier ; 
but  within  these  few  years  of  contem- 
porary public  life  he  achieved  a  success 
in  literature,  if  not  so  broad  or  gen- 
eral in  its  extent,  as  lasting,  and  per- 
haps more  endeared  to  the  heart  of 
the  nation  and  the  world  than  that  of 
his  illustrious  rival.  The  two  had  one 
great  characteristic  in  common.  They 
were  alike  distinguished  by  the  eleva- 
tion and  fervor  of  their  powers.  Each 
had  the  greatest  regard  for  literature 
as  the  highest  development  of  the  in- 
dividual powers  and  the  best  instruc- 
tor of  the  race.  There  was  some 
divergence  between  them  in  the  range 
and  application  of  their  faculties,  and 
a  greater  in  their  moral  disposition  and 
habits.  Goethe  is  the  great  modern 
representative  to  the  world  of  the  ac- 
tual in  art,  as  Schiller  is  of  the  ideal ; 
but  as  neither  of  these  qualities  can 
be  sustained  in  perfection  without 
something  of  the  other,  we  shall  find 
them,  to  a  certain  degree,  linked  in 

(310) 


their  writings.  The  more  free,  spon 
taneous  and  sympathetic  nature  of 
Schiller  has  gained  him  an  advantage 
with  posterity  over  his  contemporary, 
While  the  head  is  busy  with  the  crea- 
tions of  Goethe,  the  lyrics  of  Schiller 
have  penetrated  to  the  heart.  United, 
one  is  the  complement  of  the  other. 
They  were  of  great  mutual  service  to 
each  other  while  living ;  and  even  so 
are  they  to  the  enlightened  reader  in 
their  collected  works  at  this  day.  If 
the  hundreds  of  thousands  of  their 
countrymen  in  New  York  have  wor- 
thily given  the  preference  to  Schiller 
in  the  erection  of  his  monument  in 
the  great  park  of  the  city ;  it  is  with 
equal  justice  that  the  sentiment  of  the 
nation  at  home  is  represented  by  their 
loving  union  in  the  twin  statue  ai 
Weimar. 

Friedrich  Schiller  was  born  at  Mar 
bach,  a  small  town  of  the  Duchy 
of  Wurtemburg,  on  the  banks  of  the 
Neckar,  on  the  10th  of  November, 
1759.  His  parents  belonged  to  the 
middle  class  of  German  life.  His 
father,  Johann  Caspar  Schiller,  was 
the  son  of  a  baker,  had  been  educated 
as  a  physician  and  attained  the  posi- 
tion of  surgeon  in  a  Bavarian  regi 


FTOTTL  an  original  pointing  ly  Mehher  of  Berlin. 
,  Johnson  .^A/ilson  &  Co.. Publishers, 


- 


FRIEDRICH  SCHILLER. 


313 


has  two  sons,  Karl  and.  Franz.  The 
younger,  jealous  of  the  love  which 
Amalia  and  the  Count  bear  to  Karl, 
prejudices  his  father  against  him  by 
false  insinuations,  and  causes  a  letter 
of  disinheritance  to  be  written  to  Karl, 
who  is  at  Leipsic.  Driven  to  despera- 
tion, he  flies  into  the  forest  of  Bohemia, 
and  becomes  captain  of  a  band  of  rob- 
bers. He  afterwards  returns  in  dis- 
guise to  his  father's  house — hears  that 
his  betrothed  Amalia  has  become  in- 
constant, and  that  Franz  has  not  only- 
intercepted  all  letters  of  contrition,  but 
has  imprisoned  their  aged  father  in  a, 
tower,  with  a  view  of  starving  him  to 
death.  Karl  releases  the  old  man, 
stabs  Amalia,  and  delivers  himself  up 
to  a  poor  man  with  eleven  children, 
that  the  reward  for  his  apprehension 
may  do  good.  Franz  strangles  himself. 
An  outline  like  this  would  suggest,  at 
the  present  day,  only  a  commonplace 
sensational  melo-drama;  but  in  the 
time  and  in  the  country  in  which  it 
was  published,  it  had  a  much  deeper 
significance.  The  European  world, 
sick  at  heart  with  the  impediments  and 
corruptions  of  ages,  was  in  a  state  of 
unrest  and  agitation  which  was  soon 
to  find  serious  expression  in  the  fierce 
outbreak  of  the  French  Revolution. 
Poets,  sentimentalists  and  philosophers 
by  some  instinct  or  fatality  were  ut- 
tering remonstrances  and  aspirations 
which  might  seem  to  us,  living  after 
the  event,  as  if  moved  by  some  pro- 
phetic impulse.  There  was  then  and 
for  some  time  after  a  mingled  distrust 
and  expectation  in  the  minds  of  men 
who  subsequently  became  the  most 
contented  of  conservatives.  The  im- 
pending revolution  was  in  the  air, 
40 


though  few  dreamt  of  the  devastation 
that  was  to  occur  when  the  storm 
finally  burst.  A  sense  of  disappoint- 
ment and  even  of  despair  is  the  prepa- 
ration for  hope  and  enthusiasm.  This 
explains  the  relation  of  such  works  as 
-"The  Sorrows  of  Werter,"  and  "The 
Robbers,"  to  the  spirit  of  their  age, 
with  which,  as  shown  by  their  unpre- 
cedented effect,  they  must  have  been 
powerfully  in  sympathy.  With  all  it8 
defects,  and  no  one  can  point  them  out 
with  more  severity  of  judgment  than 
they  were  animadverted  upon  by  Schil- 
ler  himself  in  his  after  years, "  The  Rob- 
bers," remains  a  work  of  extraordinary 
power  and  capacity.  It  was  eloquent, 
enthusiastic  and  heartfelt,  with  the 
inexperience  and  imperfect  culture  and 
at  the  same  time  the  fiery  energy  of 
youth. 

Such  a  work,  filled  with  wild  out- 
bursts of  passion,  wholly  at  war  with 
conventional  life,  was  not  likely  to 
pass  without  opposition  in  the  society 
of  a  small  German  principality,  where 
etiquette  and  the  proprieties  were  es- 
tablished in  a  sovereign  tyranny.  The 
challenge  of  defiance,  in  the  name  of 
humanity,  was  objectionable  enough, 
viewed  only  as  an  ebullition  of  un- 
tamed youth ;  but  as  the  work  of  an 
officer  of  the  state,  it  was  simply  in- 
tolerable. The  grave  wiseacres  took 
the  alarm.  Certain  Grison  magistrates 
were  generally  spoken  of  in  the  play 
as  common  highwaymen;  they  pro- 
tested against  the  indecorum  in  print, 
and  the  remonstrance  was  laid  before 
the  Grand  Duke  of  Wurtemburg,  who 
sent  for  the  author,  denounced  his 
moral  and  political  heresies,  and  criti- 
cised his  literary  style,  commanding 


314 


FKIEDRICH  SCHILLER. 


him  to  avoid  poetry  in  future  and  stick 
to  his  medical  profession.  The  censure 
of  the  duke  was  of  course  reflected  in 
the  society  in  which  he  moved.  But 
there  was  a  wider  circle  which  the  lite- 
rary success  of  the  author  was  securing 
to  him,  where  he  was  honored  and  es- 
-  teemed.  Among  the  correspondents 
whom  his  fame  drew  about  him  was 
the  Frieherr  Von  Dalberg,  a  nobleman, 
superintendent  of  the  theatre  at  Man- 
hehn.  Under  his  guidance  and  super- 
vision, "  The  Robbers  "  was  adapted  to 
the  stage,  and  acted  in  January,  1782. 
Schiller  stole  secretly  away  from  his 
post  at  Stuttgard  to  witness  the  per- 
formance, concealing  himself  in  a  cor- 

7  O 

ner  of  the  house.  The  tumultuous  ap- 
plause might  have  turned  the  head  of 
a  less  excitable  being.  The  genius  of 
the  author  was  thus  approved  by  the 
surest  tests.  His  book  had  been  read 
with  admiration,  and  it  had  now,  with 
the  advantage  of  the  best  acting,  been 
received  with  rapture  from  the  stage. 
His  career,  as  a  dramatic  writer,  was 
henceforth  assured.  But  he  had  yet 
to  escape  from  the  political  thraldom 
and  from  the  limitations  of  fortune  by 
which  he  was  fettered.  It  seems  hardly 
credible,  that  for  a  second  visit  to  the 
theatre  at  Manheim,  the  first  having 
escaped  notice,  he  was  put  under  ar- 
rest. This  was  the  method  taken  by 
the  grand  duke  to  disabuse  the  mind 
of  the  young  impetuous  Schiller  of  his 
dreams  of  liberty,  and  refute  the  li- 
cense of  the  Robbers.  We  think  of  the 
poet's  own  "  Pegasus  in  harness,"  and 
how  the  winged  steel  spurned  his  im- 
pediments. Schiller  resolved  to  be 
free,  and  there  was  only  one  road  for 
him  to  freedom  —flight  from  the  terri- 


tory of  his  feudal  inaste^  the  grand 
duke. 

The  poet  had  formed  an  acquaint- 
ance  at  Stuttgard  with  a  young  musi- 
cian, named  Streicher,  with  whom  he 
planned  an  escape,  and  who  became 
his  companion  in  his  flight.  It  was 
not  easy  to  get  away  from  his  station 
without  notice;  but  advantage  was 
taken  of  the  general  occupation  of  the 
town  in  the  reception  of  the  Grand 
Duke,  Paul  of  Russia,  who  was  mar- 
ried to  a  niece  of  the  Duke  of  Wur- 
temburo*.  A  farewell  visit  was  con- 

O 

trived  by  Schiller  to  his  mother  at  one 
of  the  duke's  estates,  and  then,  on  a 
night  of  September  of  the  year  which 
had  opened  with  the  successful  per- 
formance of  his  play,  laying  aside  his 
surgeon's  uniform,  in  a  disguised  dress, 
with  an  assumed  name,  escarping  detec- 
tion, he  rode  out  with  his  friend  Strei- 
cher through  the  darkest  of  the  city 
gates  of  Stuttgard,  his  way  in  the  open 
country  illuminated  by  the  brilliant 
lights  of  the  festivities  at  the  ducal 
rural  palaces.  The  poet  carried  with 
him  twenty-three  florins,  all  his  pecu 
niary  wealth ;  but  he  had  with  him  a 
copy  of  Shakspeare.  a  volume  of  Klop- 
stock's  Odes,  and  a  new  tragedy  of  his 
own  composition,  "  The  Conspiracy  of 
Fiesco,"  on  which  he  built  his  expecta- 
tions of  profit  and  success  with  Dal- 
berg, the  superintendent  of  the  stage 
at  Manheim,  which  was  the  first  rest- 
ing place  of  the  fugitives.  A  manly 
and  courteous  letter  was  sent  by  Schil- 
ler from  this  town  to  the  Duke  of 
Wurtemburg,  stating  his  preference  of 
literature  to  medicine,  and  asking  leave 
for  a  temporary  absence  from  his  do- 
minie ns.  The  answer  to  the  request 


FKIEDBiUH  SCHILLEK. 


315 


was  an  implicit  order  to  return,  which 
was  likely  to  be  enforced  by  authority, 
if  the  fugitive  remained  at  Manheim. 
He  had  time,  however,  to  bring  "  Fi- 
esco"  to  the  notice  of  manager  Meiser, 

O  7 

and  secure  his  admiration  of  the  work, 
previous  to  pursuing  his  flight  to  Frank- 
fort. The  play,  however,  before  it  could 
be  produced  on  the  stage,  required  con- 
siderable alterations,  and,  pending  its 
completion,  the  poet,  sorely  distressed 
in  purse,  took  refuge  in  Franconia, 
where,  at  the  inn  at  Oggersheim,  he 
assumed  a  disguise  which  has  be- 
friended so  many  exiles,  including  that 
royal  personage,  Louis  Philippe — call- 
ing himself  Schmidt.  Here,  "  Fiesco  " 
was  finished  and  a  new  play  written, 
"  Court  Intriguing  and  Love."  Still, 
however,  the  expected  advances  from 
the  theatre  were  not  forthcoming.  In 
the  midst  of  great  distress  came  an 
offer  of  a  home  in  the  house  of 
Madame  Von  Wollzogen,  mistress  of  a 
small  estate  at  Bauerbach,  near  Mein- 
ingen,  a  lady  who  was  attracted  to 
Schiller  by  his  writings,  and  her  ac- 
quaintance with  him  at  Stuttgard, 
where  her  sons  had  been  students  with 
nim  in  the  military  academy.  A  friend- 
ly bookseller  at  Manheim  advanced  a 
sufficient  sum  upon  "  Fiesco  "  to  enable 
the  traveler  to  pay  his  expenses  at  the 
inn  where  he  had  resided,  and  proceed 
to  his  new  asylum.  He  pursued  the 
journey  alone,  leaving  the  musician, 
Streicher.  who,  up  to  this  time  had 
been  his  faithful  companion,  behind 
him.  At  Bauerbach  he  had  quiet, 
solitude  for  composition,  and  bold 
woodland  scenery;  but  in  the  dis- 
turbed state  of  his  fortunes,  we  may 
imagine  more  of  disquiet  and  unrest 


than  of  repose  in  the  retirement,  in 
which  he  still  maintained  a  kind  of 
disguised  concealment.  It  was  time 
that  this  sort  of  thing  should  be  at  an 
end,  when  all  Germany  was  learning 
to  cherish  his  fame.  The  grand  duke 
seems  to  have  come  to  this  opinion; 
he  quietly  dropped  his  hostility  and 
permitted  Dalberg  to  invite  the  exile 
to  Manheim,  with  a  small  provision 
for  hia  support  as  poet  to  the  theatre. 
He  returned  to  this  scene  of  his  dra- 
matic triumph  in  the  summer  of  1783, 
after  nearly  two  years  of  absence  as  a 
fugitive.  The  two  new  plays  were 
now  published,  and,  in  1784,  brought 
successfully  upon  the  stage.  Both 
these  productions,  "  Fiesco,"  and  "  The 
Cabal  and  Love,"  were  written  in 
prose,  like  their  predecessor,  "The 
Robbers,"  and  both  shared  its  tumul- 
tuous emotions.  They  belonged  alike 
to  the  first  unsettled  period  of  Schil- 
ler's career,  when  he  was  at  war  with 
the  world  and  himself,  not  in  any 
heartless,  contemptuous  spirit, — for  he 
had  nothing  of  the  mocking  fiend  in. 

O  O 

his  nature, — but,  in  reality,  at  bottom, 
with  a  loving  motive,  questioning  life 
as  to  its  worth  and  meaning,  arraign- 
ing its  actions,  as  it  appeared  to  him 
fraught  with  cruelty  or  barren  in  great 
virtues.  In  such  protests  and  wail- 
ings  of  despair,  there  is  a  deep  sympa- 
thy with  goodness ;  in  the  very  unrest 
of  the  soul,  the  seeds  of  its  future  quiet 
and  repose  are  germinating.  Schiller, 
like  his  great  contemporary,  Goethe, 
underwent  this  change,  as  thousands  of 
refined  minds  before  and  since  have  ex- 
perienced it.  For  nothing  is  more  com- 
mon than  to  find  the  radical  and  zealot 
accepting  ordei  and  quiet  in  the  ranks 


316 


FREEDRIOH  SCHILLER 


of  the  conservative,  with  much  less  of 
inconsistency  than  is  generally  ima- 
gined. Schiller  soon  found  this  calm, 
out  never  lost  his  early  passion  for 
freedom.  His  pursuit  of  the  drama 
proved  to  him  an  excellent  means  of 
instruction.  It  appeared  at  first  to 
mislead  him,  by  its  popular  successes, 
and  the  encouragement  it  gave  to  his 
immature  efforts,  but  it  soon  became 
the  best  discipline  of  his  powers,  and 
his  best  instructor  in  philosophy.  Tak- 
ing Shakespeare  as  his  guide  at  the 
start,  though  he  never  attained  the 
variety  and  fulness  of  life,  the  uni- 
versality of  that  great  master,  yet  he 
made  immeasurable  advances  upon  the 
French  school,  which  was  prevalent  in 
Germany  before  his  time,  particularly 
in  a  certain  unforced,  natural  expres- 
sion of  the  heroic,  the  poetic  vein,  in 
fact,  which  predominated  in  his  plays, 
as  in  those  of  the  English  dramatist. 
The  imagination,  which  in  the  first  in- 
stance, in  its  untamed  exercise,  led  him 
beyond  the  bounds  of  decorum,  also  in 
no  long  time,  when  he  applied  himself 
to  great  historical  subjects,  made  him 
sensitive  to  defects.  .  When  he  beg;an 

o 

to  study  character,  he  saw  how  much 
of  self-knowledge  was  needed  to  give 
it  effect  in  the  required  contrasts  of  his 
dramatis  personal.  Moreover,  his  con- 
tact with  the  stage,  first  in  the  repre- 
sentation of  his  plays,  demanding  from 
him  repeated  revisions  and  alterations; 
and  then,  in  his  new  official  capacity 
as  one  of  the  directors  of  the  theatre 
at  Manheim,  had  their  direct  influence 
in  giving  that  practical  turn  to  his 
talents  which  Shakspeare  also  learnt 
touch  in  the  same  way.  An  historical 
subject,  like  that  of  Fiesco,  demanded 


a  certain  breadth  of  treatment  with 
local  coloring,  which  he  gave  to  it, 
achieving  his  chief  triumph  in  the  ar- 
dor and  force  of  passion  and  the  gen 
uine  eloquence  with  which  it  was  ut 
tered.  Whatever  he  attempted  was 
sure  to  be  vividly  expressed. 

Life  with  Schiller,  was  to  the  end,  a 
process  of  education  and  development. 
His  struggles  with  the  tyrannical  sys. 
tern  at  Wurtemburg,  and,  when  he 
escaped  from  it,  with  poverty ;  his 
conscientious  study  of  medicine  as  a 
means  of  livelihood,  when  he  threw 
his  whole  soul  into  it ;  his  composition 
and  revision  of  his  works  in  his  soli' 
tary  retirement ;  his  employment  about 
the  theatre  in  regulating  the  labors  of 
others — all  these  conditions,  rapidly 
succeeding  one  another,  were  constant 
means  of  instruction,  to  which  he  now 
added  another  equally  powerful,  to 
which  the  rest  contributed,  his  writ- 
ings in  the  department  of  philosophi 
cal  criticism.  Periodical  literature  was 
always  attractive  to  him,  as  well  as  to 
Goethe.  Indeed  in  that  transition,  one 
of  mental  cultivation  in  Germany,  when 
new  principles  were  to  be  established, 
it  was  the  most  natural,  if  not  an  in- 
dispensable means  of  individual  and 
national  education.  To  Schiller  it  of 
fered  not  only  an  occasion  of  discussion 
on  topics  of  art  and  letters,  but  the 
opportunity  of  testing  his  dramatic 
compositions  as  he  proceeded  with 
them.  In  1775,  he  commenced  the 
publication  of  the  "Rhenish  Thalia," 
mainly  a  theatrical  journal,  as  its  name 
implies,  occupied  with  the  interests  of 
the  stage,  which  was  continued  for 
about  nine  years — a  long  life  for  au 
undertaking  of  the  kind,  with  a  mark 


FRIEDEICH  SCHILLER 


317 


ed  individual  character.  In  the  open- 
ing number,  Schiller  published  three 
acts  of  the  dramatic  work  on  which  he 
was  then  engaged,  Don  Carlos,  tlie 
first  of  his  tragedies  in  verse.  In  "  Tha- 
lia," also,  he  printed  his  "  Philosophic 
Letters,"  in  which  he  discussed  some  of 
the  religious  or  irreligious  views  of  the 
day  in  a  self-questioning  spirit.  His  oc- 
casional poems  also  now  assumed  a  deep- 
er character,  with  a  greater  variety  of 
illustration  from  both  the  inner  and  the 
outer  life.  One  of  these,  with  this  wider 
scope,  the  precursor  of  many  other  no- 
ble heart  utterances  of  the  kind,  the 
"  Hymn  to  Joy,"  is  said  to  have  had 
its  origin  in  his  "  saving  a  poor  student 
of  Theology,  impelled  by  destitution 
and  the  fear  of  starvation,  from  drown- 
ing himself  in  the  river  Pleisse.  Schil- 
ler gave  him  what  money  he  had,  ob- 
tained his  promise  to  relinquish  the 
thought  of  suicide,  at  least  while  the 
money  lasted,  and,  a  few  days  after- 
ward, amid  the  convivialities  of  a  mar- 
riage feast,  related  the  circumstance  so 
as  to  affect  all  present.  A  subscrip- 
tion was  made,  which  enabled  the  stu- 
dent to  complete  his  studies,  and  ulti- 
mately to  enter  into  an  official  station* 
Elated  with  the  success  of  his  humani- 
ty, it  is  to  Humanity  that  Schiller  con- 
secrated this  ode."  It  is  indeed  a  no- 
ble ode,  inspired  by  the  loftiest  emo- 
tion, a.  jubilant  triumph,  in  the  embrace 
of  the  beneficence  of  Providence,  "  o'er 
all  the  ills  of  life  victorious."  Sir  Ed- 
ward Bulwer  Lytton,  who  furnishes  us 
with  the  anecdote  we  have  given  of 
the  suggestion  of  the  poem,  has  also 
translated  it  with  kindred  felicity. 
We  are  reminded  by  it  of  a  similar  fer- 
vor, both  in  the  idea  and  in  the  expres 


sion,  in  the  poems  of  Burns,  who  was 
always  inspired  by  the  great  theme  of 
the  brotherhood  of  man,  in  which  the 
German  finds  the  fairest  element  of  joy. 
In  their  lyrical  nature,  indeed,  there 
was  a  striking  resemblance  between 
Bums  and  Schiller.  Both  came  into 
the  world  the  same  year,  cherished  the 
same  manly  spirit  of  independence,  had 
an  equal  generous  warmth  of  tempera- 
ment and  genius,  and  alike  heralded  the 
new  spirit  of  the  nineteenth  century 
The  "  Hymn  to  Joy  "  has  the  very  ring 
of  the  humanitarian  poetry  of  Kobert 
Burns. 

After  passing  eighteen  months  at 
Manheim,  Schiller  took  up  his  resi- 
dence at  Leipsic  for  a  time,  where,  as  we 
have  seen,  he  composed  the  eloquent 
poem  to  which  we  have  made  reference. 
It  is  this  frank,  earnest  outpouring  of 
his  aspirations,  in  sensibility  springing 
warm  from  the  heart,  which  more  than 
his  finely  artistic  labors  has  given  the 
poet  his  popularity  with  his  country- 
men and  the  world.  It  is,  in  fact,  the 
.secret  of  his  power,  overcoming  all  de- 
fects in  his  greater  dramatic  works,  and 
inspiring  with  life  and  movement  the 
humblest  of  his  occasional  productions. 
That  such  a  man  should  not  be  a  lover 
would  be  a  contradiction  in  terms.  A 
lady-love,  in  fact,  is  as  necessary  to  a 
poet  as  Don  Quixote  thought  her  to  be 
to  a  knight-errant,  there  being  much  in 
common  between  poetry  and  knight- 
errantry.  We  accordingly  find  Schil- 
ler from  time  to  time  much  occupied 
with  various  tender  affections,  bring 
ing  forth  the  pure  chivalry  of  his  na- 
ture. There  was  an  early  first-love  oi 
the  period  of  his  servitude  atStuttgard, 
a  certain  "  Laura,"  celebrated  in  hia 


FEIEDEICH  SCHILLER. 


/outhful  verses ;  who  was  succeeded  in 
iiis  imagination  in  his  days  of  exile  by 
the  daughter  of  his   friend,  Madame 
von  Wollzogen,  whom  he  would  have 
married,   had   his   fortune   permitted. 
Compelled  to  relinquish  this  fair  prize, 
he  became  enamored  of  the  daughter 
of  his  bookseller,  Schwann,  at  Manheim, 
and  here  again  he  proposed  and  was 
disappointed,  the  affair  coming  to  noth- 
ing, leaving,  however,  a  wholesome  re- 
mainder of  friendship.   They  were  pru- 
dent people,  these  acquaintances  of  his, 
thinking  that  their  daughters  were  not 
to  be  given  to  a  poet,  however  amiable, 
till  his  fortunes  were  properly  establish- 
ed. The  poet  was  meanwhile  proceeding 
with  the  composition  of  his  tragedy, 
"Don  Carlos,"  which  was   published 
at  Leipsicin  1786.  Its  concluding  scenes 
were  written  at  Dresden,  where  the  au- 
thor was  hospitably  entertained  by  his 
friend  and  admirer,  Korner,  the  father 
of  the  celebrated  lyrical  war  poet.     In 
the  story  of  "  Don  Carlos,"  the  ill-fated 
son  of  Philip  II.,  of  Spain,  Schiller  had 
a  romantic  subject,  one  of  those  affect-, 
ing  and  obscure  passages  of  history,  a 
tale  of  illustrious  suffering,  interesting 
alike  to  the  feelings  and  the  imagination. 

o  o 

The  characters  of  the  court  whom  the 
dramatist  introduces  into  the  play  are 
philosophically  as  well  as  poetically 
conceived.  Philip  at  any  time  of  his 
career,  in  his  every-day  actions,  is  a 
marked  character  for  the  stage ;  he  is 
cast  by  nature  and  circumstances  in  a 
peculiar  mould,  the  very  embodiment 
of  a  stern,  bigoted  and  remorseless  sys- 
tem of  tyranny — an  opportunity  for 
contrast  which  Schiller  was  sure  to 
avail  himself  of  in  the  introduction  of  a 
wise  and  liberal  character,  the  Marquis 


of  Posa,  who  speaks  as  the  apostle  of 
freedom  and  the  modern  idea  of  the 
paramount  necessity  to  a  state  of  a 
happy  and  contented  people.  In  the 
development  of  character,  in  the  con« 
struction  of  the  plot,  and  in  felicity  of 
expression,  "  Don  Carlos  "  has  its  rank 
among  the  most  mature  of  the  author's 
dramatic  works. 

While  engaged  upon  this  tragedy, 
Schiller  wrote  his  fragmentary  novel, 
the  "  Ghost  Seer,"  which  Carlyle  de- 
scribes as  "  an  attempt  to  exemplify 
the  process  of  hoodwinking  an  acute 
but  too  sensitive  man ;  of  working  on 
the  latent  germ  of  superstition  which 
exists  beneath  his  outward  scepticism ; 
harassing  his  mind  by  the  terrors  of 
magic, — the  magic  of   chemistry  and 
natural  philosophy  and  natural  cun 
ning ;  till,  racked  by  doubts  and  ago 
nizing  fears,  and  plunging  from  ont 
depth  of  dark  uncertainty  into  another 
he  is  driven  at  length  to  still  his  scru 
pies  in  the  bosom  of    the  Infallible 
Church."      The  studies  in  which  the 
poet  was  engaged  in  the  composition 
of  "  Don  Carlos "  confirmed  in  him  a 
passion  for  history,  which  led  to  his 
projecting  several  works  in  that  de- 
partment of  literature.     One  of  these, 
growing  directly  out  of  his  researches 
in  the  period  of  Philip,  was  a  "  Histo- 
ry of  the  Revolt  of  the  United  Neth- 
erlands," of  which  he  issued  the  first 
volume  in  1788,  bringing  the  narrative 
down  to  the  entrance  of  the  Duke  of 
Alva  into  Brussels.     The  work  was 
never  carried  farther,  except  a   frag- 
mentary chapter  or  two,  afterwards  sep 
arately    published.      The    subject,    a 
great  national  struggle  for  liberty,  was, 
of  course,  after  the  writer's  own  heart. 


FKIEDEICII  SCHILLER. 


319 


and  he  presented  it  in  a  good  solid 
style,  skilfully  and  with  his  accustomed 
vigor  of  expression.  The  book  was 
well  received  and  gained  the  author 
what,  in  his  circumstances,  was  worth 
more  than  popular  applause,  the  ap- 
pointment of  Professor  of  History  at 
the  University  of  Jena.  This  brought 
him  within  the  charmed  circle  of  the 
literary  society  about  the  court  at  Wei- 
mar, but  a  few  miles  distant,  and  de- 
termined the  future  complexion  of  his 
life.  Ke  left  Dresden  to  enter  upon 
this  new  position  in  1789,  and,  having 
now  a  settled  means  of  support,  early 
in  the  following  year  was  married  to 
Charlotte  *ren  Lengefeld,  an  accom- 
plished youug  lady,  of  good  station  in 
society,  with  whom  he  had  become  ac- 
quainted two  or  three  years  previously 
on  a  visit  to  her  family  at  Rudolstadt. 
His  new  duties  involved  him  in  a  closer 
devotion  to  historical  studies,  which  he 
pursued  with  his  accustomed  ardor, 
sketching  out  his  work,  as  usual  with 
him,  on  a  grand  scale,  and  employing 
his  leisure  in  the  preparation  of  an 
elaborate  "  History  of  the  Thirty 
Years'  War,"  which  appeared  in  1791. 
He  had  hardly  completed  this  when 
he  was  seized  with  an  attack  of  illness, 
a  disorder  of  the  chest,  from  which  he 
never  entirely  recovered.  His  life 
seems  to  have  been  despaired  of,  for  a 
report  of  his  death  was  carried  to  Den- 
mark, when  a  tribute  to  his  memory 
was  paid  in  a  celebration,  in  which 
some  of  the  most  distinguished  persons 
of  the  country  participated — a  recita- 
tion of  his  "  Hymn  to '  Joy  "  being  one 
of  the  ceremonies.  When  it  was  found 
that  the  lamented  poet  was  still  alive, 
the  gratitude  of  two  truly  noblemen 


of  the  party,  the  Duke  of  Holstein 
Augustenburg  and  the  Count  vcn 
Schimmelmann,  took  a  practical  direc- 
tion, in  conferring  upon  him  a  pension 
of  a  thousand  crowns  for  three  years. 
The  manner  in  which  this  was  convey- 
•ed  was  as  agreeable  as  the  gift  itself. 
Laying  aside,  as  utterly  unworthy  of 
the  occasion,  all  pretensions  to  patron- 
age and  claims  from  superior  rank,  the 
noble  givers  dwelt  only  upon  the  en 
thusiasm  which  the  poet  had  kindled 
in  their  minds,  as  brothers  in  a  com- 
mon  humanity  and  fellow-citizens  "  in 
that  great  republic  whose  boundaries 
extend  beyond  single  generations,  be- 
yond the  limits  of  earth  itself."  A 
letter  like  this  must  have  been  of 
greater  emcacy  in  promoting  the  cure 
of  the  patient  than  any  prescription  of 
his  physicians.  It  was  a  grand  illus- 
tration of  his  own  "  Hymn  to  Joy," 
and  it  is  not  to  be  wondered  at,  that 
the  poet  could  hardly  be  restrained  by 
his  physicians,  from  proceeding  at  once 
to  Denmark,  to  accept  the  hearty  invi- 
tation of  his  admirers,  and  throw  him- 
self into  their  arms  in  enthusiast^ 
gratitude. 

His  residence  at  Jena  brought  Schil- 
ler immediately  into  intimate  relations 
with  Goethe.  Their  characters  were 
in  many  respects  unlike,  and,  previously 
to  being  well  acquainted  with  each 
other,  they  would  appear  to  have  en- 
tertained a  species  of  mutual  antipa- 
thy. A  few  years  before,  Goethe,  who 
was  then  old  enough  to  have  outlived 
some  of  his  own  youthful  literary  ex- 
travagances, looked  with  distrust  upon 
the  extravagances  of  Schiller,  and 
Schiller  was  of  too  genial  a  nature  to 
take  kindly  to  the  intellectual  coldness 


FEIEDRICH  SCHILLER. 


of  Goethe;  but,  when  they  came  to 
know  one  another,  they  found,  as  must 
always  be  the  case,  with  such  riclily  en- 
dowed minds,  with  such  elevated  ob- 
jects before  them,  that  the  points  of 
agreement  were  far  more  and  greater 
than  the  points  of  difference.  They 
were  soon  united  in  the  common  work 
of  elevating  the  intellectual  character 
of  the  country,  and  adding  to  its  stores 
of  literary  wealth.  The  influence  of 
one  upon  the  other  was  important  in 
various  ways.  They  were  both  mas- 
ters of  a  philosophical  way  of  think- 
ing, seekers  after  universal  truth ;  the 
foes  of  all  imbecility  and  narrowness. 
In  the  drama  they  had  a  common 
ground  of  sympathy  and  effort  in  its 
creation  in  their  own  writings  ;  in  its 
regulation  in  the  practical  affairs  of 
the  stage.  When  they  met  at  Weimar, 
and,  uniting  their  experience,  looked 
forth  upon  the  world  of  German  liter- 
ature and  society,  they  were  in  suffi- 
cient agreement  to  join  their  forces  in 
an  effort  to  reform  the  times.  Schiller, 
who  was  always  endeavoring  to  realize 
a  higher  ideal,  thought  that  the  time 
was  come  to  substitute  something  more 
elevated  and  consistent,  more  in  ac- 
cordance with  the  better  nature  of 
man,  than  was  prevailing  in  the  unset- 
tled mode  of  thinking  growing  out  of 
the  French  Eevolution.  "  The  more," 
wrote  Schiller,  "  the  narrow  interests 
of  the  present  keep  the  minds  of  men 
on  the  stretch,  and  subjugate  while 
they  narrow,  the  more  imperious  is  the 
need  to  free  them  through  the  higher 
universal  interest  in  that  which  is 
purely  human  and  removed  beyond 
the  influences  of  time,  and  thus  once 
more  to  reunite  the  divided  political 


world  under  the  banner  of  Truth  and 
Beauty."  In  such  terms  he  announced 
at  Jena  a  new  periodical  work,  "  The 
Horen "  or  "  Hours,"  to  succeed  the 
"  Thalia,"  which  he  now  discontinued. 
The  new  work  soon  contained  some  of 
the  most  thoughtful  philosophical  es- 
says of  Schiller;  and  Goethe,  among 
other  things,  contributed  portions  of 
his  novel  of  "Wilhelm  Meister."  A 
lighter  annual  work  in  which  the  two 
friends  shared,  the  "  Musen- Almanach," 
became  famous  for  their  joint  compo- 
sitions, "  The  Xenien,"  a  series  of  epi- 
grammatic couplets,  in  imitation  of 
those  bearing  the  name  "  Xenia  "  in  the 
works  of  the  Latin  poet  Martial — 
sharp,  stinging  satires,  a  "  German 
Dunciad,"  as  Carlyle  calls  them,  level- 
ed at  false  pretences,  insipidity  and 
literary  affectations  throughout  the 
land. 

Schiller's  health,  shattered  by  his 
complaint  of  the  chest,  was  now  failing ; 
but,with  his  characteristic  energy,  much 
of  his  best  literary  work  was  accom- 
plished under  this  disadvantage,  which 
might  have  utterly  extinguished  the 
labors  of  a  less  heroic  spirit.  Some 
thirteen  years  of  life,  however,  remain- 
ed to  him  before  he  fell,  prematurely, 
at  the  age  of  forty-five.  The  habit  he 
pursued  in  writing  was  not  calculated 
to  lengthen  his  days.  While  Goethe, 
with  unclouded  brow,  gave  the  morn- 
ing hours  to  his  work,  Schiller  uniform- 
ly wrote  at  night,  and  provoked  his 
powers  to  the  highest  pitch  of  exertion 
by  the  free  use  of  stimulants — as  a 
means,  not  of  indulgence,  but  of  sus- 
taining exhausted  nature.  That  he 
might  be  retired  and  free  from  inter- 
ruption, he  built  in  the  rural  suburb  of 


-FKIEDKICH  SCHILLER 


321 


Jena,  a  small  garden-house  with  a  sin- 
gle room,  where  he  passed  much  of  his 
time  in  summer.  "  On  sitting  down 
to  his  desk  at  night,"  we  are  told, 
"he  was  wont  to  keep  some  strong 
coffee,  or  wine-chocolate,  but  more 
frequen  tly  a  flask  of  old  Rhenish,  or 
Champagne,  standing  by  him.  Often 
the  neighbors  used  to  hear  him  earnest- 
ly declaiming,  in  the  silence  of  the 
night:  and  whoever  had  an  opportu- 
nity of  watching  him  on  such  occasions, 
a  thing  very  easy  to  be  done  on  the 
heights  lying  opposite  his  little  garden- 
house,  on  the  other  side  of  the  dell, 
might  see  him,  now  speaking  aloud  and 
walking  swiftly  to  and  fro  in  his 
chamber,  then  suddenly  throwing  him- 
self down  into  his  chair  and  writing; 
and  drinking  the  while,  sometimes 
more  than  once,  from  the  glass  stand- 
ing near  him.  In  winter  he  was 
to  be  found  at  his  desk  till  four,  or 
even  five  o'  clock  in  the  morning ;  in 
summer,  till  towards  three.  He  then 
went  to  bed,  from  which  he  seldom 
rose  till  nine  or  ten." 

In  this  way  his  greatest  drama, 
"  Wallenstein,"  was  written.  As  "  Don 
Carlos"  had  thrown  the  dramatist  upon 
history  and  produced  "  The  Revolt  of 
the  Netherlands,"  so  history  in  turn 
brought  back  the  author  to  the  drama. 
"Wallenstein"  is  an  epitome  in  the 
highest  form  of  poetry  of  "  The  Thirty 
Years'  War,"  out  of  the  composition  of 
which  it  directly  grew.  The  hero  is 
one  of  the  grandest  figures  in  military 
history.  A  noble  by  family  and  nature, 
by  birth  a  Bohemian,  educated  in  Italy, 
imbued  with  the  astrologic  learning 
and  belief  of  his  age,  of  immense  pow- 
er and  wealth,  the  reward  of  his  sue- 
41 


cess  as  a  combatant  at  the  head  of 
large  imperial  armies  on  the  great  bat- 
tle fields  of  his  century,  falling  at 
last  in  the  maturity  of  his  powers,  not 
by  the  hand  of  the  enemy,  but,  unarm- 
ed, by  the  sword  of  a  conspiratur?  there 
is  something  colossal  in  the  man,  as 
in  the  theatre  of  his  achievements. 
Schiller  has  plucked  this  wonderful 
apparition  from  the  page  of  history,  an 
impersonation  of  ambition,  and,  adorn- 
ing the  character  with  the  refinements 
of  poetry  and  philosophy,  has  given  it 
a  thoroughly  human  interest,  while  the 
setting,  with  the  profoundly  pathetic 
loves  of  Max  Piccolomini  and  Thekla, 
the  daughter  of  Wallenstein,  is  as  re- 
markable as  the  main  figure.  The 
work,  for  it  assumes  greater  propor- 
tions than  an  ordinary  tragedy,  is  in 
three  parts;  the  first,  "  Wallenstein's 
Camp,"  a  prelude  as  it  were,  in  one  act, 
introduces  us  to  the  picturesque  scen- 
ery of  these  great  wars;  the  second, 
"  The  Piccolomini,"  exhibits  the  plots 
and  counterplots  which  are  to  end  in 
the  ruin  of  the  great  commander;  the 
third  completes  the  action  in  "The 
Death  of  Wallenstein."  As  the  two 
latter  parts  have  been  admirably  tran 
slated  by  Coleridge,  the  English  rea- 
der has  an  opportunity  of  appreciating 
the  merits  of  the  piece,  which  De  Quin- 
cey  has  pronounced  "  an  immortal 
drama  and  beyond  all  competition  the 
nearest  in  point  of  excellence  to  the 
dramas  of  Shakspeare."  It  was  pub- 
lished by  the  author,  the  result  of 
many  years  of  thought  and  the  best 
exertion  of  his  powers,  in  1799.  The 
next  year  it  was  followed  by  "  Maria 
Stuart,"  a  pathetic  representation  of 
a  character  which  has  a  strange  hold 


322  

on   the    sympathies    of    the    public, 
and  in  the  year  after  appeared  "The 
Maid  of  Orleans,"  in  which  the  author 
again  availed  himself  of  a  personage 
of  general  interest  and  well  suited  to 
the  chivalric  demands  of  his  generous 
nature.     In  "  The  Bride  of  Messina," 
which  appeared  in  1803,  the  author  at- 
tempted a  revival  of  the  classic  form 
and  interest,  with  much  success  in  the 
purely  poetic   and    lyrical    portions, 
with  little  in  the  requirements  of  the 
stage.     His  next  and  last  play,  pro- 
duced in  1804,  the  year  before  his  death, 
"William  Tell,"  is  one  of   his  greatest 
dramatic  triumphs,  simple,  energetic, 
truthful,  inspired  by  the  mountain  air 
of  liberty.     It  was  a  noble  work  with 
which  to  close  a  life  devoted  to  the  in- 
terests of  freedom.     The  end  was  at 
hand.     In  the  spring  of  1805,  the  pul- 
monary disease,  which  had  long  hung 


FEIEDEICH  SCHILLER. 


heavily  about  him,  was  pressing  to  ita 
inevitable  result.  A  feverish  attack  at 
the  end  of  April  confined  him  to  his 
house  at  Weimar,  where  he  had  of  late 
resided ;  it  increased  in  force,  and,  on 
the  9th  of  May,  terminated  his  life. 
His  mind  had  wandered ;  but  at  the 
close  he  was  in  possession  of  his  facul- 
ties. He  took  a  calm  farewell  of  his 
friends  and  family,  and  directed  that 
his  funeral  should  be  conducted,  accord- 
ing to  the  tenor  of  his  life,  in  a  sim- 
ple, private  manner.  He  passed  away 
at  evening,  looking  upon  the  setting 
sun.  On  being  asked,  shortly  before 
his  death,  how  he  felt,  he  said, "  Calmer 
and  calmer,"  and  his  last  recorded  ob- 
servation in  view  of  his  departure  was, 
"  Many  things  were  growing  plain  an  d 
clear  to  him."  He  was  buried  at  night, 
borne  to  the  grave  by  young  students 
and  artists. 


HENRY  GRATTAN. 


325 


by  his  model,  and  what  of  poetical  fac- 
ulty he  had,  was  to  be  turned  into  a 
different  direction,  The  imagery  which 
would  have  been  tame  and  insipid  in 
the  worn-out  couplets  of  Pope,  adorned 
and  animated  with  their  rhetorical 
graces  the  fiery  bursts  of  the  orator. 

His  associations  in  Ireland  were 
meanwhile  developing  his  social  and 
political  talents.  He  was  called  to  the 
bar  in  17 72.  In  the  interval  of  his 
terms,  as  we  are  told  by  his  son  Henry, 
"  he  lived  much  in  the  society  of  Mr. 
Gervase  Parker  Bushe,  who  was  mar- 
ried to  his  sister;  Dean  Marly  (after- 
wards Bishop  of  Waterford),  ardmany 
of  the  distinguished  individuals,  who, 
at  that  period,  formed  part  of  the  gay, 
the  polished  and  the  talented  circle, 
that  for  a  short  time  shone  forth  in 
Ireland.  With  them  he  partook  in  the 
performances  of  the  private  theatricals 
at  Farmley  (the  seat  of  Mr.  Flood), 
and  at  Marlay  (the  residence  of  Mr. 
David  La  louche),  where  he  wrote  an 
epilogue  to  the  Mask  of  Comus,  which 
was  spoken  by  the  beautiful  and  ac- 
complished Countess  of  Lanesborough. 
In  concert  with  Mr.  Flood,  he  wrote 
some  of  the  pieces  which  are  collected 
in  a  work  entitled  t  Baratariania,'  and 
which  contained  remarks  on  Lord  Town- 
eend's  administration  in  Ireland.  Lord 
Annaly,  Mr.  Daly,  Mr.  Burgh,  Mr.  Yel- 
verton,  Colonel  Marly,  his  uncle,  on 
whose  judgment  and  understanding  he 
Bet  the  highest  value,  Mr.  W.  Broome 
and  Mr.  Brownlow,  formed  the  chief  of 
his  personal  and  political  acquaint- 
ances. But  the  individual  whose  so- 
ciety was  at  that  time  the  general  ob- 
ject of  attraction,  and  whose  friendship 
was  then  the  source  of  infinite  grati- 


fication to  Mr.  Grattan,  as  it  ever  after- 
wards was  of  the  tenderest  and  most 
pleasing  recollection,  was  the  amiable, 
the  accomplished  and  the  patriotic  Earl 
of  Charlemont." 

Grattan  appears  also  to  have  owed 
much  at  the  outset  to  the  public  ex- 
ample and  personal  influence  of  his  fu- 
ture antagonist,  Henry  Flood,  who  at 
this  time  was  the  great  home  parlia- 
mentary leader  in  the  cause  of  Irish 
nationality.  Following  in  the  princi- 
ples of  several  illustrious  predecessors, 
among  them  Dean  Swift,  he  organized 
the  opposition  to  the  legislative  claims 
of  the  Imperial  Parliament,  which  Grat- 
tan afterwards  led  to  victory.  The  lat- 
ter entered  the  Irish  House  of  Com- 
mons at  the  close  of  1775,  as  member 
for  the  town  of  Charlemont,  on  the 
nomination  of  his  friend,  the  Earl  of 
Charlemont,  and  continued  to  repre- 
sent that  borough  for  fifteen  years,  at 
the  end  of  which  time  he  was  elected 
for  the  city  of  Dublin.  At  the  com- 
mencement of  his  career,  the  political 
evils  under  which  the  country  was  suf 
fering  were  the  restrictions  upon  trade 
and  the  absolute  superior  authority  of 
the  British  Parliament  over  the  local 
legislature.  Grattan  took  both  these 
questions  in  hand,  and  soon  developed 
in  their  discussion  the  force  of  his  un- 
rivaled eloquence.  To  arouse  the  feel- 
ing of  nationality  and  secure  by  his  exer- 
tions the  political  independence  of  his 
country,  were  his  great  objects.  Fa- 
vored by  the  influences  of  the  Ameri- 
can Revolution,  and  the  authority  of 
the  large  patriotic  volunteer  force  in  the 
country,  some  important  concessions  in 
respect  to  freedom  of  trade  had  been 
exorted  from  the  British  Parliament, 


826 


HENEY   GRATTAN. 


when  Grattan,  on  the  19th  of  April, 
1780,  in  a  speech  in  the  Irish  Parlia- 
ment, introduced  his  celebrated  declar- 
ation, denying  the  claim  of  the  British 
Parliament,  so  long  exercised,  to  make 
law  for  Ireland,  and  asserting  in  the 
words  of  his  resolution,  "That  the 
King's  most  excellent  Majesty,  and  the 
Lords  and  Commons  of  Ireland,  are  the 
only  power  competent  to  make  laws  to 
bind  Ireland."  Enforcing  the  lesson 
of  the  American  war  in  its  exhibition 
of  the  impotence  of  parliament  to  con- 
trol the  rights  of  the  Colonies,  he  show- 
ed the  disabilities  under  which  Ireland 
had  long  labored,  and  demanded  not 
the  concession  of  reforms  as  measures 
of  expediency  which  might  be  recalled, 
but  the  exclusive  privilege  to  her  par- 
liament of  home  legislation. 

It  was  two  years  before  this  splendid 
effort  bore  its  fruit  in  the  emancipation 
of  the  Irish  Parliament.  But  the  ap- 
peal to  the  nation  was  never  lost  sight 
of.  The  resolution  of  the  people  was 
strengthened,  and  on  the  fall  of  the 
ministry  of  Lord  North,  Fox  in  vain 
endeavored  to  tame  or  control  the  Irish 
leaders  by  management  and  influence. 
On  the  22d  of  February,  1782,  Grattan, 
in  an  elaborate  speech,  reviewed  the 
precedents  of  the  obnoxious  English 
government,  and  moved  an  address  to 
the  king,  demanding  the  liberties, 
while  it  asserted  the  constitutional 
loyalty  of  the  Irish  people.  The  lead- 
ing principle  of  the  address  was,  that 
"  The  crown  of  Ireland  was  an  imperial 
crown,  and  the  kingdom  of  Ireland  a 
distinct  kingdom,  with  a  parliament  of 
her  own,  the  sole  legislature  therecf." 
Two  months  later,  this  was  followed 
np  by  what  is  called  The  Declaration 


of  Independence,  in  the  Irish  House  of 
Commons,  which  was  adopted  by  the 
House  of  Lords  in  an  address  to  the 
crown,  reasserting  the  former  declara 
tions  in  explicit  terms,  to  wit :  "  Thai 
there  is  no  body  of  men  competent  to 
make  laws  to  bind  this  nation  except 
the  King,  Lords  and  Commons  of  Ire 
land ;  nor  any  other  parliament  whiot 
hath  any  authority  or  power  of  any 
sort  whatsoever  in  this  country,  save 
only  the  Parliament  of  Ireland;  and 
assuring  His  Majesty,  that  we  humbly 
conceive  that  in  this  right  the  very  es- 
sence of  our  liberties  exist;  a  right 
^vhich  we,  on  the  part  of  all  the  peo- 
ple of  Ireland,  do  claim  as  their  birth- 
right, and  which  we  cannot  yield  but 
with  our  lives."  Grattan,  leaving  a 
sick-bed  to  which  he  had  been  con- 
fined, careworn  and  emaciated,  rallied 
his  mental  strength  and  supported 
these  resolutions  in  a  powerful  speech 
which  elicited  from  Lord  Charlemont 
the  remark :  "  If  ever  spirit  could  be 
said  to  act  independent  of  body,  it  was 
on  that  occasion."  The  resolutions 
were  adopted,  brought  before  the  king 
who  laid  them  before  parliament,  when 
with  the  concurrence  and  recommend- 
ation of  Fox,  the  statute  of  6th  of 
George  the  First,  declaring  the  author 
ity  over  Ireland  of  the  British  Parlia- 
ment was  repealed.  The  nation  thus 
yielded  to  the  demands  of  Grattan  and 
his  supporters,  and  when  the  Irish  Par- 
liament met  on  the  27th  of  May,  the 
act  of  surrender  was  announced  by  the 
lord-lieutenant,  the  Duke  of  Portland, 
and  the  peaceful  revolution  of  1782 
was  accomplished. 

For  this  service  to  his  country,  the 
Irish  Parliament,  desirous  of  securing 


HENRY  GRATTAN. 


327 


.to  their  benefactor  a  suitable  provision 
for  life,  proposed  a  grant  of  one  hun- 
dred thousand  pounds  to  Grattan  for 
the  purchase  of  an  estate.  He  would 
have  declined  this  altogether,  for  he 
had  great  reluctance  at  receiving  a  pe- 
cuniary return  for  services  which,  on 
his  part,  had  been  inspired  simply  by 
patriotism ;  but  his  patrimony  was  in- 
adequate to  his  support ;  he  had  sacri- 
ficed his  prospects  at  the  bar,  and  to 
serve  his  country  in  the  future  he 
must  be  independent  in  fortune,  and 
above  the  necessity  of  party  favors  or 
rewards.  He  would  consent,  however, 
to  receive  only  half  of  the  sum  pro- 
posed, which  was  granted  him.  In  the 
midst  of  the  general  rejoicing  at  the 
success  of  his  great  measure,  Grattan 
was  called  upon  to  confront  his  former 
friend,  Flood,  who  now  placed  himself 
in  an  attitude  of  advanced  patriotism, 
asserting  that  the  act  of  repeal  of  the 
statute  of  George  I.  was  insufficient  for 
the  security  of  the  liberties  of  Ireland, 
and  that  a  special  act  should  be  re- 
quired from  the  English  parliament, 
distinctly  renouncing  all  claims  to  leg- 
islate for  Ireland.  There  was  a  certain 
speciousness  in  this,  as  it  was  brought 
before  the  public  with  the  violent 
patriotic  appeals  of  Flood,  and,  strange 
to  say,  the  doubts  and  suspicions  cast 
upon  Grattan,  which,  for  a  time,  dis- 
credited the  real  advantage  which  had 
been  gained  for  the  country.  But  this 
singular  opposition  only  brought  out 
with  greater  force  the  strength  of  Grat- 
tan's  character,  and  his  ability  as  a 
statesman.  The  arguments  against 
*  Simple  repeal,"  as  the  question  was 
called,  were  met  by  him  in  the  new 
parliament  witt  close  and  well  consid- 


sidered  replies,  addressed  to  the  sober 
judgment  of  his  hearers ;  while,  for  the 
great  head  of  the  opposition  and  oblo- 
quy which  he  encountered,  he  had, 
when  the  occasion  was  fully  ripe,  in 
reserve,  an  exhibition  of  his  inconsist- 
encies in  the  most  withering  terms  of 
sarcasm  and  denunciation.  The  ine- 
vitable sequel  in  that  day  in  Ireland 
was  a  hostile  meeting,  which,  the 
speaker  anticipating,  had  both  parties 
taken  into  custody  and  bound  to  keep 
the  peace.  While  the  arrangements 
for  the  expected  duel  were  in  progress, 
Grattan  made  his  will,  leaving  his 
grant  of  fifty  thousand  pounds  to  the 
state,  charged  only  with  a  life  annuity 
to  his  wife,  having  been  married  the 
year  before  to  Miss  Henrietta  Fitz- 
gerald, a  lady  of  beauty  and  worth. 

Grattan  remained  in  the  Irish  par- 
liament till  1797,  when  he  withdrew 
for  awhile,  declining  re-election,  till  he 
was  returned  in  1800  for  the  borough 
of  Wicklow,  to  oppose  the  Union  with 
Great  Britain,  which  was  then  in  pro- 
gress. During  this  period,  of  nearly 
twenty  years,  he  was  foremost  in  the 
advocacy  of  all  measures  affecting  the 
independence  of  his  country,  particu- 
larly in  relation  to  her  commercial 
prosperity.  In  1788,  he  attacked,  with- 
out success,  the  system  of  tithes  for 
the  payment  of  the  clergy ;  supporting 
his  views  by  an  elaborate  exhibition 
of  the  subject  in  its  historical,  moral 
and  economical  relations.  His  speeches 
on  this  topic  are  replete  with  the  finest 
effects  of  his  eloquence,  as  he  reviews 
the  question  of  church  establishments 
by  the  standard  of  the  simplicity  of 
the  Gospels. 

Grattan,  ever  disdaining  the  low  at 


82S 


HEJSKY   GKATTAN. 


mosphere  of  ordinary  politics,  never 
appeared  to  more  advantage  than  when 
he  was  able  to  rise,  as  was  his  wont, 
to  the  higher  element  of  morality.  The 
friend  of  liberty,  he  knew  no  distinc- 
tion of  party  or  sect  in  its  advocacy. 
The  cause  with  which,  after  the  legis- 
lative and  judicial  independence  of  his 
country,  he  is  most  identified,  was  that 
of  Catholic  Emancipation.  He  made 
it  the  object  of  his  noblest  oratory  in 
the  Irish  Parliament,  and  when,  after 
the  Union,  his  services  to  his  country 
were  transferred  to  the  arena  of  the 
British  Parliament,  the  Catholic  ques- 
tion was  the  foremost  cause  he  pleaded, 
and,  in  the  discussion  of  which,  his 
great  powers  were  first  observed  and 
admired  by  his  new  British  audience. 
It  was  a  political  necessity  for  the  peo- 
ple of  Ireland,  necessary  for  the  main- 
tenance of  such  liberty  as  they  had  ac- 
quired. Three-fourths  of  the  popula- 
tion was  disfranchised,  leaving  the  ac- 
tual representation  in  a  small  minority 
of  legislators  exposed  to  the  influence 
or  corruption  of  England. 

Masterly  as  was  his  demonstration, 
enforced  by  every  aid  of  wit  and  rail- 
lery, the  eloquence  of  Grattan  in  Ire- 
land was  ineffective  on  this  subject. 
Prejudice  and  partisanship  still  led  the 
hour ;  the  sound  views  of  the  ablest  of 
her  statesmen  were  set  aside  for  a  vacil- 
latory  policy  in  Parliament,  and  ex- 
treme revolutionary  measures  outside 
of  it.  The  philosophic  mind  of  Grat- 
tan was  conscious  of  the  situation,  but 
powerless  to  prevent  the  injury;  he 
saw  the  progress  of  insurrection  in  the 
wild  efforts  of  the  democracy,  infected 
by  the  license  of  the  French  Revolu- 
tion, and.  the  failure  of  the  rebellion  in 


1798,  inevitably  paving  the  way  foi 
the  sacrifice  of  Irish  independence  in 
the  Union  of  1800.  In  vain  in  a  series 
of  speeches  he  exhausted  his  experience 
and  eloquence  in  protests  against  what 
he  considered  that  fatal  policy.  "  Iden- 
tification," said  he,  "  is  a  solid  and  im 
perial  maxim,  necessary  for  the  preser- 
vation of  freedom  necessary  for  that 
of  Empire ;  but,  without  union  of 
hearts — with  a  separate  government, 
and  without  a  separate  parliament, 
identification  is  extinction,  is  dishonor, 
is  conquest — not  identification.  Yet  I 
do  not  give  up  the  country — I  see  her 
in  a  swoon,  but  she  is  not  dead — though 
in  her  tomb  she  lies  helpless  and  mo- 
tionless, still  there  is  on  her  lips  a  spir 
it  of  life,  and  on  her  cheek  a  glow  of 
beauty — 

'  Thou  art  not  conquered ;  beauty's  ensign  yet 
Is  crimson  in  thy  lips,  and  in  thy  cheeks, 
And  death's  pale  flag  is  not  advanced  there.' 

While  a  plank  of  the  vessel  sticks  to 
gether,  I  will  not  leave  her.  Let  the 
courtier  present  his  flimsy  sail,  and 
carry  the  light  bark  of  his  faith,  with 
every  new  breath  of  wind — I  will  re- 
main anchored  here — with  fidelity  to 
the  fortunes  of  my  country,  faithful  to 
her  freedom,  faithful  to  her  fall." 

The  union  was  accomplished,  and 
true  to  his  promise,  Grattan  continued 
to  devote  his  best  powers  to  the  ser 
vice  of  his  country.  He  entered  the* 
English  Parliament  in  1805,  from  the 
borough  of  Malton,  in  Yorkshire,  and 
the  following  year,  in  the  general  elec- 
tion, was  sent  from  his  native  city  of 
Dublin.  He  was  several  times  re-elec- 
ted, and  continued  in  parliament  till 
his  death.  In  this  new  sphere  of  duty 
he,  at  once,  as  we  have  mentioned,  re- 


HENRY  GRATTAN. 


329 


Binned  his  efforts  in  the  cause  of  Cath- 
olic Emancipation.  There  was  no  weap- 
on in  the  armory  of  the  orator  which 
he  did  not  employ  in  the  discussion 
of  this  great  question  of  religious  lib- 
erty. What  the  slave  trade  was  to 
Wilberforce,  the  Catholic  disqualifica- 
tion was  to  Grattan.  He  pursued  the 
oppression  with  every  argument  of  ex- 
perience and  logic,  with  a  clearness, 
sagacity  and  pregnant  variety  of  illus- 
tration, which,  outliving  the  occasion 
which  produced  it,  charm  the  reader  of 
his  speeches  to  this  day.  He  identified 
himself  with  the  liberal  whig  policy  of 
England,  and,  like  Burke,  was  accepted 
among  the  foremost  of  English  states- 
men. 

His  speech  in  the  English  parlia- 
ment, on  the  downfall  of  Bonaparte,  on 
the  25th  of  May,  1815,  on  the  eve  of 
the  final  struggle  at  Waterloo,  full  of 
the  speaker's  characteristic  tumultuous 
utterances,  abounds  with  these  striking 
scintillations  of  his  genius.  Describing 
the  course  of  Napoleon  in  his  attempts 
at  the  subjugation  of  Europe, — "  In 
pursuit  of  this  object,"  he  says,  "  and 
on  his  plan  of  a  Western  Empirej  he 
conceived,  and  in  part  executed  the 
design  of  consigning  to  plunder  and 
destruction  the  vast  regions  of  Russia ; 
he  quits  the  genial  clime  of  the  temper- 
ate zone;  he  bursts  through  the  nar- 
row limits  of  an  immense  empire ;  he 
abandons  comfort  and  security,  and  he 
hurries  to  the  pole  to  hazard  them  all, 
and  with  them  the  companions  of  his 
victories,  and  the  fame  and  fruits  of  his 
crimes  and  his  talents,  on  a  speculation 
of  leaving  in  Europe,  throughout  the 
whole  of  its  extent,  no  one  free  or 
independent  nation:  to  oppose  this 
42 


huge  conception  of  mischief  and  des- 
potism, the  great  potentate  of  the 
north,  from  his  gloomy  recesses,  ad 
vances  to  defend,  against  the  vorac 
ity  of  ambition,  the  sterility  of  his 
empire.  Ambition  is  omnivorous — it 
feasts  on  famine  and  sheds  tons  of  blood, 
that  it  may  starve  in  ice,  in  order  to  com- 
mit a  rollery  on  desolation.'1''  Of  the 
false  glare,  subduing  the  reason,  which 
invests  the  conqueror  on  a  great  scale, 
he  says  :  "  If  a  prince  takes  Venice,  we 
are  indignant ;  but  if  he  seizes  on  a 
great  part  of  Europe,  stands  covered 
with  the  blood  of  millions  and  the 
spoils  of  half  mankind,  our  indignation 
ceases ;  vice  become  gigantic,  conquers 
the  understanding,  and  mankind  begin 
by  wonder,  and  conclude  by  worship. 
The  character  of  Bonaparte  is  admira- 
bly calculated  for  this  effect ;  he  in- 
vests himself  with  much  theatrical 
grandeur;  he  is  a  great  actor  in  the 
tragedy  of  his  own  government;  the 
fire  of  his  genius  precipitates  on  uni- 
versal empire,  certain  to  destroy  his 
neighbors  or  himself;  better  formed  to 
acquire  empire  than  to  keep  it,  he  is  n 
hero  and  a  calamity,  formed  to  punish 
France  and  to  perplex  Europe." 

In  the  same  speech,  there  are  two  el- 
oquent tributes  to  Fox  and  Burke,  ex- 
hibiting, like  the  passages  we  have  just 
given,  the  hue  of  imagination  with 
which  Grattan  invested  familiar  politi- 
cal topics.  "The  authority  of  Mr. 
Fox  has  been  alluded  to ;  a  great  au- 
thority and  a  great  man ;  his  name  ex- 
cites tenderness  and  wonder;  to  do 
justice  to  that  immortal  person,  you 
must  not  limit  your  view  to  this  coun- 
try; his  genius  was  not  confined  to 
England,  it  acted  three  hundred  milea 


330 


HENKY  GKATTAK 


off  in  breaking  the  chains  of  Ireland ; 
it  was  seen  three  thousand  miles  off  in 
communicating  freedom  to  the  Ameri- 
cans ;  it  was  visible,  I  know  not  how 
far  off,  in  ameliorating  the  condition  of 
the  Indian ;  it  was  discernible  on  the 
coast  of  Africa,  in  accomplishing  the 
abolition  of  the  slave  trade.  You  are 
to  measure  the  magnitude  of  his  mind 
by  parallels  of  latitude.  His  heart 
was  as  soft  as  that  of  a  woman;  his 
intellect  was  adamant ;  his  weaknesses 
were  virtues ;  they  protected  him  against 
the  hard  habit  of  a  politician,  and  as- 
sisted nature  to  make  him  amiable  and 
interesting."  And  of  Burke :  "  On  the 
French  subject,  speaking  of  authority, 
we  cannot  forget  Mr.  Burke.  Mr. 
Burke,  the  prodigy  of  nature  and  ac- 
quisition. He  read  everything,  he  saw 
everything,  he  foresaw  everything.  His 
knowledge  of  history  amounted  to  a 
power  of  foretelling ;  and  when  he  per- 
ceived the  wild  work  that  was  doing 
in  France,  that  great  political  physician, 
intelligent  of  symptoms,  distinguished 
between  the  access  of  fever  and  the 
force  of  health ;  and  what  other  men 
conceived  to  be  the  vigor  of  her  consti- 
tution, he  knew  to  be  no  more  than  the 
paroxysm  of  her  madness,  and  then, 
prophet-like,  he  pronounced  the  desti- 
nies of  France,  and,  in  his  prophetic 
fury,  admonished  nations." 

The  passage  which  followed  in  this 
eloquent  appeal  for  the  continuance  of 
the  European  contest  on  the  part  of 
England  was  worthy,  in  its  picturesque 
power  of  illustration,  the  genius  of 
Burke  himself.  "  Gentlemen  speak  of 
the  Bourbon  family.  I  have  already 
Baid,  we  should  not  force  the  Bourbon 
upon  France,  but  we  owe  it  to  departed 


(I  would,  rather  say  to  interrupted) 
greatness,  to  observe,  that  the  house  of 
Bourbon  was  not  tyrannical;  under 
her,  everything,  except  the  administra- 
tion of  the  country,  was  open  to  ani- 
madversion; every  subject  was  open 
to  discussion,  philosophical,  ecclesias- 
tical and  political,  so  that  learning,  and 
arts,  and  sciences,  made  progress.  Even 
England  consented  to  borrow  not  a 
little  from  the  temperate  meridian  of 
that  government.  Her  court  stood 
controlled  by  opinion,  limited  by  prin- 
ciples of  honor,  and  softened  by  the 
influence  of  manners:  and,  on  the 
whole,  there  was  an  amenity  in  the 
condition  of  France  which  rendered 
the  French  an  amiable,  an  enlightened, 
a  gallant  and  accomplished  race.  Over 
this  gallant  race  you  see  imposed  an 
oriental  despotism.  Their  present  court 
(Bonaparte's  court)  has  gotten  the 
idiom  of  the  East  as  well  as  her  con- 
stitution ;  a  fantastic  and  barbaric  ex- 
pression: an  unreality  which  leaves 
in  the  shade  the  modesty  of  truth,  and 
states  nothing  as  it  is,  and  everything 
as  it  is  not.  The  attitude  is  affected, 
the  taste  is  corrupted,  and  the  intel- 
lect perverted.  Do  you  wish  to  con- 
firm this  military  tyranny  in  the  heart 
of  Europe?  A  tyranny  founded  on 
the  triumph  of  the  army  over  the  prin- 
ciples of  civil  government,  tending  to 
universalize  throughout  Europe  the 
domination  of  the  sword,  and  to  reduce 
to  paper  and  parchment,  Magna  Charta, 
and  all  our  civil  constitutions.  An  ex 
periment  such  as  no  country  ever  made, 
and  no  good  country  would  ever  per 
mit ;  to  relax  the  moral  and  religious 
influences;  to  set  heaven  and  earth 
adrift  from  one  another,  and  make 


HENRY  GRATTAK 


331 


(rod  Almighty  a  tolerated  alien  in  his 
own  creation  ;  an  insurrectionary  hope 
to  every  bad  man  in  the  community, 
and  a  frightful  lesson  to  profit  and 
power,  vested  in  those  who  have  pan- 
dered their  allegiance  from  king  to 
emperor,  and  now  found  their  preten- 
sions to  domination  on  the  merit  of 
breaking  their  oaths,  and  deposing 
their  sovereign.  Should  you  do  any- 
thing so  monstrous  as  to  leave  your 
allies,  in  order  to  conform  to  such  a 
system ;  should  you  forget  your  name, 
forget  your  ancestors,  and  the  inherit- 
ance they  have  left  you  of  morality 
and  renown ;  should  you  astonish  Eu- 
rope, by  quitting  your  allies  to  render 
immortal  such  a  composition,  would 
not  the  nations  exclaim,  '  You  have 
very  providently  watched  over  our  in- 
terests, and  very  generously  have  you 
contributed  to  our  service,  and  do  you 
falter  now  ?  In  vain  have  you  stopped 
in  your  own  person  the  flying  fortunes 
of  Europe ;  in  vain  have  you  taken  the 
eagle  of  Napoleon,  and  snatched  invin- 
cibility from  his  standard,  if  now,  when 
confederated  Europe  is  ready  to  march, 
you  take  the  lead  in  the  desertion,  and 
preach  the  penitence  of  Bonaparte  and 
the  poverty  of  England.' r 

Pure  as  was  the  patriotism  of  Grat- 
tan,  he  more  than  once  experienced  the 
ingratitude  of  his  turbulent  country- 
men. He  was  no  friend  to  disorgan- 
izing or  insurrectionary  proceedings, 
and  was  steadily  opposed  to  French 
propagandism  in  the  revolutionary  ex- 
citements of  a  portion  of  his  country- 
men. For  his  course  on  this  point,  to- 
wards the  close  of  his  life,  when  he 
was  chaired  after  his  election  to  par- 
liament, in  Dublin,  in  1818,  he  was  per- 


sonally assaulted,  and  his  life  endan- 
gered by  the  attack  of  a  desperate  gang 
His  face  was  cut  open  by  a  severe 
blow.  He  confronted  his  assailant? 
with  that  bold  courage  which  was  part 
of  his  nature,  and  when  the  affair  was 
over,  with  characteristic  magnanimity, 
refused  to  entertain  any  feelings  of 
hostility  against  the  party  opposed  to 
him,  submitting  himself  in  all  things 
to  his  paramount  love  of  his  country. 
"  A  few  individuals,"  he  wrote,  in  an- 
swer to  a  public  address  from  the  citi- 
zens of  Dublin — "  a  sudden  and  inex- 
plicable impulse — a  momentary  infat- 
uation— anything — everything— might 
account  for  that  violence  of  which  you 
complain.  It  is  not  worth  your  inves- 
tigation." 

Broken  in  health,  at  the  age  of 
seventy,  he  made  his  last  journey  to 
London,  to  advocate  in  parliament  a 
petition  from  his  Roman  Catholic  fel- 
low citizens.  He  was  warned  of  the 
danger  to  his  health,  but  simply  re- 
plied, "  I  should  be  happy  to  die  in 
the  discharge  of  my  duty."  He  reached 
London  in  a  state  of  great  debility, 
and  expired  in  that  city  before  he 
could  accomplish  the  object  of  his  mis- 
sion, on  the  14th  of  May,  1820.  He 
had  expressed  a  wish  in  his  last  illness 
to  be  buried  in  a  retired  churchyard 
at  Moyanne,  in  Queens  County,  on  the 
estate  given  him  by  the  Irish  people, 
but  yielded  to  a  request  from  the 
Duke  of  Sussex,  that  his  remains 
should  be  placed  in  Westminster  Ab- 
bey. A  letter,  signed  by  members  of 
the  liberal  party  was,  after  his  death, 
addressed  to  his  sons  renewing  the*  re- 
quest. It  was  from  the  pen  of  the  poet 
Rogers.  "Filled  with  veneration  for 


332 


HENTCY  GRATTAN. 


the  character  of  your  father,  we  ven- 
ture to  express  a  wish,  common  to  us 
with  many  of  those  who  most  admired 
and  loved  him,  that  what  remains  of 
him  should  be  allowed  to  continue 
among  us.  It  has  pleased  Divine  Pro- 
vidence to  deprive  the  empire  of  his 
services,  while  he  was  here  in  the 
neighborhood  of  that  sacred  edifice 
where  great  men  from  all  parts  of  the 
British  dominions  have  been  for  ages 
interred.  We  are  desirous  of  an  op- 
portunity of  joining  in  the  due  honors 
to  tried  virtue  and  genius.  Mr.  Grat- 
tan  belongs  to  us  also,  and  great  would 
be  our  consolation,  were  we  to  be  per- 
mitted to  follow  him  to  the  grave,  and 
to  place  him  where  he  would  not  have 
been  unwilling  to  lie — by  the  side  of 
his  illustrious  fellow-laborers  in  the 
cause  of  freedom."  The  remains  of 
Grattan  were  accordingly  deposited  in 
the  north  transept  of  the  Abbey,  by 
the  side  of  Chatham,  Pitt,  and  his  be- 
loved friend,  Charles  James  Fox. 

"What  Irishman,"  wrote  Sydney 
Smith  in  an  article  in  the  "  Edin  burgh 
Review  "  shortly  after  the  event,  "  does 
not  feel  proud  that  he  has  lived  in  the 
days  of  Grattan  ?  Who  has  not  turned 
to  him  for  comfort,  from  the  false 
friends  and  open  enemies  of  Ireland  ? 
Who  did  not  remember  him  in  the  days 
of  its  burnings,  and  wastings,  and  mur- 
ders? No  government  ever  dismayed 
him — the  world  could  not  bribe  him 
— he  thought  only  of  Ireland — lived 
for  no  other  object — dedicated  to  her 
his  beautiful  fancy,  his  elegant  wit,  his 
manly  courage  and  all  the  splendor  of 
his  astonishing  eloquence.  He  was 
so  born  and  so  gifted,  that  poetry,  foren- 
sic skill,  elegant  literature  and  all  the 


highest  attainments  of  human  genius, 
were  within  his  reach ;  but  he  thought 
the  noblest  occupation  of  a  man  was 
to  make  other  men  happy  and  free ; 
and  in  that  straight  line  he  went  on 
for  fifty  years,  without  one  side-look 
without  one  yielding  thought,  without 
one  motive  in  his  heart  which  he 
might  not  have  laid  open  to  the  view 
of  God  and  man.  He  is  gone ! — but 
there  is  not  a  single  day  of  his  honest 
life  of  which  every  good  Irishman 
would  not  be  more  proud,  than  of  the 
whole  political  existence  of  his  coun- 
trymen— the  annual  deserters  and  be- 
trayers of  their  native  land." 

The  prominent  characteristics  of  Grat- 
tan's  eloquence,  representing  essentially 
his  moral  character,  have  been  happily 
described  by  Brougham.  "Among 
the  orators,"  he  writes,  "  as  among  the 
statesmen  of  his  age,  Mr.  Grattan  oc- 
cupies a  place  in  the  foremost  rank ; 
and  it  was  the  age  of  the  Pitts,  the 
Foxes  and  the  Sheridans.  His  elo- 
quence was  of  a  very  high  order,  all 
but  of  the  very  highest,  and  it  was 
eminently  original.  In  the  constant 
stream  of  a  diction  replete  with  ep- 
igram and  point — a  stream  on  which 
floated  gracefully,  because  naturally, 
flowers  of  various  hues, — was  poured 
forth  the  closest  reasoning,  the  most 
luminous  statement,  the  most  persua- 
sive display  of  all  the  motives  that 
could  influence,  and  of  all  the  details 
that  could  enlighten,  his  audience. 
Often  a  different  strain  was  heard,  and 
it  was  declamatory  and  vehement — 01 
pity  was  to  be  moved,  and  its  pathos 
was  touching  as  it  was  simple — or 
above  all,  an  adversary,  sunk  in  base- 
ness, or  covered  with  crimes,  was  to  be 


HENRY   GRATTAN. 


333 


punished  or  to  be  destroyed,  and  a 
storm  of  the  most  terrible  invective 
raged  with  all  the  nights  of  sarcasm  and 
the  thunders  of  abuse.  The  critic,  led 
away  for  the  moment,  and  unable  to 
do  more  than  feel  with  the  audience, 
could  in  those  cases,  even  when  he 
came  to  reflect  and  to  judge,  find  often 
nothing  to  reprehend ;  seldom  in  any 
case  more  than  the  excess  of  epigram, 
which  had  yet  become  so  natural  to 
the  orator,  that  his  argument  and  his 
narrative,  and  even  his  sagacious  un- 
folding of  principles,  seemed  spontan- 
eously to  clothe  themselves  in  the 
most  pointed  terseness,  and  most  apt 
and  felicitous  antitheses.  From  the 
faults  of  his  country's  eloquence,  he 
was,  generally  speaking,  free.  Occa- 
sionally an  over  fondness  for  vehement 
expression,  an  exaggeration  of  passion, 
or  an  offensive  appeal  to  heaven,  might 
be  noted ;  very  rarely  a  loaded  use  of 
figures,  and,  more  rarely  still,  of  fig- 
ures broken  and  mixed.  But  the  per- 
petual striving  after  far-fetched  quaint- 
ness;  the  disdaining  to  say  any  one 
thing  in  an  easy  and  natural  style; 
the  contempt  of  that  rule,  as  true  in 
rhetoric  as  in  conduct,  that  it  is  wise 
to  do  common  things  in  the  common 
way;  the  affectation  of  excessive  feeling 
upon  all  things,  without  regard  to 
their  relative  importance ;  the  making 
any  occasion  even  the  most  fitted  to 
rouse  genuine  and  natural  feeling,  a 
mere  opportunity  of  theatrical  display 
—all  these  failings,  by  which  so  many 


oratorical  reputations  have  been  blight- 
ed among  a  people  famous  for  their  al 
most  universal  oratorical  genius,  were 
looked  for  in  vain  when  Mr.Grattan  rose, 
whether  in  the  senate  of  his  native 
.country,  or  in  that  to  which  he  was 
transferred  by  the  Union.  And  if  he 
had  some  peculiarity  of  outward  ap- 
pearance, as  a  low  and  awkward  per- 
son, in  which  he  resembled  the  first  of 
orators,  and  even  of  manner,  in  which 
he  had  not  like  him  made  the  defects 
of  nature  yield  to  severe  culture ;  so 
had  he  one  excellence  of  the  very  high- 
est order,  in  which  he  may  be  truly 
said  to  have  left  all  the  orators  of  mod- 
ern time  behind — the  severe  abstinence 
which  rests  satisfied  with  striking  the 
decisive  word  in  a  blow  or  two,  noi 
weakening  its  effect  by  repetition  and 
expansion, — and  another  excellence 
higher  still,  in  which  no  orator  of  any 
age  is  his  equal,  the  easy  and  copious 
flow  of  most  profound,  sagacious  and 
original  principles,  enunciated  in  terse 
and  striking,  but  appropriate  language. 
To  give  a  sample  of  this  latter  peculiar- 
ity would  be  less  easy,  and  would  oc- 
cupy more  space ;  but  of  the  former,  it 
may  be  truly  said  that  Dante  himself 
never  conjured  up  a  striking,  a  pathetic 
and  an  appropriate  image  in  fewer 
words  than  Mr.  Grattan  employed  to 
describe  his  relation  towards  Irish  in- 
dependence, when,  alluding  to  its  rise 
in  1782,  and  its  fall  twenty  years  later 
he  said,  '  I  sat  by  its  cradle — I  follow 
ed  its  hearse.' " 


SARAH    VAN    BRUGH    JAY. 


ARAH  VAN  BRUGH  LIVING. 
STON  was  the  youngest  daugh- 
ter of  William  Livingston,  of  New 
York,  afterwards  for  many  years  Gov- 
ernor of  New  Jersey,  and  one  of  the 
most  active  and  energetic  men  of  his 
day  in  setting  forward  and  sustaining 
the  cause  of  liberty  and  independence. 
The  family  was  aristocratic  and  weal- 
thy, and  noted  for  its  high  social  and 
political  rank  in  the  province  and 
'State  of  New  York;  but,  notwith- 
standing all  this,  it  was  a  family  which 
ardently  embraced  the  cause  of  our 
common  country,  and  must  always 
hold  a  well-deserved  place  in  the  an- 
nals of  the  United  States. 

The  fourth  daughter  of  Governor 
Livingston  was  named  Sarah  Van 
Brugh,  after  her  great  grandmother. 
She  was  born  in  August,  1757,  and 
received  as  thorough  and  complete 
an  education  as  was  possible  at  that 
time  to  be  obtained.  Mental  ability 
of  a  superior  order  early  manifested 
itself ;  and  by  judicious  training  and 
culture,  added  to  the  society  and  in- 
tercourse of  the  best  families  of  her 
native  State,  her  faculties  were  rapidly 
developed.  Before  she  was  eighteen, 
Sarah  Livingston  was  married  to  John 

83 1) 


Jay,  who  had  been  educated  for  the 
bar,  and  was  already  a  prominent  and 
rising  man  in  the  community.  Her 
husband  was  some  ten  years  her  sen- 
ior, and  at  the  date  of  her  marriage, 
April  28th,  1774,  was  not  in  any  pub- 
lic office ;  but  within  a  month,  before 
the  traditional  honey-moon  had  ex- 
pired, John  Jay  was  imperatively  call- 
ed to  take  part  in  the  initiatory  move- 
ments in  the  colonies,  which  led  on,  as 
by  necessity,  to  the  Revolution  and  the 
war  of  Independence.  How  severe  a 
trial  this  was  to  the  young  and  loving 
wife  can  hardly  be  imagined ;  for  it  is 
to  be  borne  in  mind,  that  Jay,  who 
possessed  a  clear,  logical  intellect,  and 
held  a  pen  equalled  by  few  men  of 
that  day,  was  placed  on  the  Committee 
of  Safety  in  New  York,  was  a  member 
of  the  first  Continental  Congress,  was 
actively  and  zealously  occupied  in  the 
preparation  of  papers,  addresses,  de- 
clarations, etc.,  issued  by  Congress,  and 
took  his  full  share  in  sanctioning  and 
carrying  forward  measures  looking  to 
the  ultimate  ends  had  in  view  by  the 
Declaration  of  Independence.  Conse- 
sequently,  he  was  compelled  to  be  ab- 
sent from  home  the  larger  part  of  his 
time. 


SARAH  VAN  BRUGH  JAY. 


335 


These  first  few  years  of  her  married 
life  were  anxious  ones,  indeed,  to  the 
wife  of  John  Jay.  She  resided  partly 
at  her  father's,  in  New  Jersey,  and 
partly  at  the  home  of  her  husband's  pa- 
rents. This  was  situate  at  Rye,  West- 
chester  county,  N.  Y.,  but  ere  long  it 
had  to  be  abandoned  to  the  British, 
and  was  not  occupied  again  till  after 
the  war.  Writing  to  his  wife,  in  July, 
1 776,  from  Connecticut,  where  he  had 
gone  on  public  business,  Jay  says : — 
"  My  Dear  Sally,  I  purpose  returning 
to  White  Plains  by  way  of  Elizabeth- 
town.  Don't,  however,  depend  upon 
it,  lest  you  be  disappointed.  Are  you 
yet  provided  with  a  secure  retreat  in 
case  Elizabethtown  should  cease  to  be 
a  place  of  security  ?  I  shall  not  be  at 
ease  till  this  be  done.  You  know  my 
happiness  depends  on  your  welfare; 
and,  therefore,  I  flatter  myself  your 
affection  for  me  has,  before  this  will 
reach  you,  induced  you  to  attend  to 
that  necessary  object.  I  daily  please 
myself  with  an  expectation  of  finding 
our  boy  in  health  and  much  grown, 
and  my  good  wife  perfectly  recovered 
and  in  good  spirits." 

Two  years  later,  Jay  was  elected 
President  of  Congress,  on  which  occa- 
sion his  wife  wrote  to  him :  "  I  had 
the  pleasure  of  finding  by  the  news- 
papers, that  you  are  honored  with  the 

first  oifice  on  the  continent 

Had  you  consulted  me,  as  some  men 
have  their  wives,  about  public  meas- 
ures, I  should  not  have  been  Roman 
matron  enough  to  have  given  you  so 
entirely  to  the  public."  Nevertheless, 
Mrs.  Jay  was  a  brave  and  high-spirit- 
ed woman,  and,  like  others  of  her  sex 
at  that  period,  accomplished  Bonders 


in  sustaining,  cheering  and  helping 
forward  her  husband  in  his  career  of 
devotion  to  his  native  land.  This  was 
evinced  in  many  ways,  but  in  none, 
perhaps,  more  strikingly  than  in  the 
readiness  and  heartiness  with  which 
she  encountered  the  dangers  of  a  sea 
voyage,  with  its  risk  of  capture  and 
other  evils,  when  duty  called  her  hus- 
band to  cross  the  Atlantic. 

John  Jay  was  appointed  minister  to 
Spain,  in  October,  1779,  and  at  the 
close  of  the  month,  embarked  from 
Philadelphia  in  a  government  frigate, 
named  The  Confederacy.  The  voyage 
was  a  stormy  one,  and  not  only  ship, 
wreck  was  imminent,  but  the  frigate 
just  escaped  being  caught  by  an  En- 
glish fleet  off  Martinico.  Thence  Jay 
and  his  party  proceeded  to  Spain, 
which  was  reached  in  January,  1780. 
The  Spanish  mission  was  in  all  impor- 
tant respects  a  failure.  That  proud 
and  supercilious  government  treated 
our  minister  in  a  way  that  stirred  to 
the  very  depths  the  blood  of  John  Jay, 
and  as  he  steadily  refused  to  be  receiv- 
ed or  acknowledged  in  any  character 
but  as  the  representative  of  a  free  and 
independent  nation,  his  residence  at 
Madrid  was  far  from  agreeable,  and 
Mrs.  Jay  did  not,  of  course,  make  her 
appearance  at  court.  Two  years  later, 
he  was  directed  to  leave  Spain,  and 
join  Franklin  and  Adams  at  Paris,  and 
take  part  in  the  negotiations  for  peace 
consequent  upon  the  capture  of  Corn- 
wallis  and  the  close  of  the  revolution 

In  June,  1782,  after  a  tedious  and 
fatiguing  journey  from  Madrid,  Mrs. 
Jay,  with  her  husband  and  child,  ar 
rived  in  the  gay  capital  of  France 
The  important  work  entrusted  to  Jay, 


836 


SAKAH  YAN  BKUGH  JAY. 


in  conjunction  with  Franklin  and 
Adams,  of  arranging  and  settling  upon 
the  terms  of  a  treaty  of  peace  with 
England,  occupied  more  than  a  year ; 
and  the  high  character  and  firm  patri- 
otism of  Jay,  were  especially  valuable 
in  securing  what  was  felt  to  be  due  to 
the  honor  and  dignity  of  our  country. 
The  French  and  Spanish  governments 
were  quite  too  ready  to  treat  the  new 
republic  as  a  sort  of  ward,  to  be  held 
in  tutelage,  and  to  be  guided  in  great 
measure  by  what  seemed  to  them  the 
best  course  to  be  pursued ;  but  in  John 
Jay,  equallv  with  John  Adams,  they 
found  men  as  able  as  they  were,  pre- 
pared to  maintain  the  rights  of  an  in- 
dependent nation.  The  treaty  was 
signed  in  September,  1783,  and  fully 
justified  the  wisdom  and  ability  of  the 
men  charged  by  Congress  with  its  care 
and  successful  prosecution.  Jay,  some- 
what injured  in  health,  by  anxious 
labors,  went  to  England  soon  after, 
and  was  greatly  benefitted  by  the  wa- 
ters at  Bath.  After  the  opening  of 
1784,  he  returned  to  Paris  and  rejoin- 
ed his  family. 

These  two  years  of  life  in  Paris,  at 
this  time,  were  marked  by  many  inter- 
esting circumstances,  and  furnished 
souvenirs  to  Mrs.  Jay  never  to  be  for- 
gotten, in  view  of  what  subsequently 
took  place  in  the  capital  of  fashion 
and  folly.  Perhaps,  at  no  time,  was 
Paris  more  gay,  and  apparently  alive 
to  the  enticements  and  pleasures  of 
society,  and  of  literary  and  scientific 
culture,  than  in  those  years  which  im- 
mediately preceded  the  cataclysm  of 
the  French  Revolution.  Unconscious, 
it  would  seem,  of  the  existence  of  those 
volcanic  fires  soon  to  burst  forth  in  all 


their  fury,  the  court  and  nobility  vied, 
in  pride  and  splendor,  with  preceding 
reigns,  and  the  beautiful  Marie  Antoi 
nette,  unwitting  as  an  infant  child  of 
the  real  state  of  affairs,  shone  in  all 
her  elegance  and  attractiveness,  in  the 
midst  of  wealth  and  profusion.  Of 
this  charming  queen,  Mrs.  Jay,  in  a 
letter  to  a  friend  at  home,  writes,  in 
1782,  "She  is  so  handsome,  and  her 
manners  are  so  engaging,  that,  almost 
forgetful  of  republican  principles,  I  was 
ready,  while  in  her  presence,  to  declare 
her  born  to  be  a  queen." 

Mrs.  Jay  was  a  great  favorite  in  so- 
ciety during  her  residence  in  France. 
Spain,  as  we  have  noted,  was  not  so 
agreeable  for  various  reasons ;  but  she 
thoroughly  enjoyed  the  company  of 
the  beautiful  and  highly  cultivated 
persons  whom  it  was  her  privilege  to 
associate  with  in  Paris.  Lafayette 
and  his  estimable  lady  were  among 
the  first  to  welcome  Mrs.  Jay  to  the 
new  sphere  she  was  about  to  fill.  In- 
deed the  acquaintance  between  these 
ladies  soon  ripened  into  friendship, 
and  their  letters  manifest  a  cor- 
dial intimacy,  equally  agreeable  and 
creditable  to  both  parties.  The  Mar- 
chioness used  to  invite  Mrs.  Jay's 
young  daughter  to  visit  Mademoiselle 
de  la  Fayette,  and  Mrs.  Jay,  in  reply, 
would  assure  her  that  "  it  would  give 
her  daughter  great  pleasure  to  wait 
upon  Madame  de  la  Fayette's  little 
family."  There  is  little  reason  to 
doubt  that  both  these  young  mothers 
enjoyed  domestic  reunions  far  more 
than  the  splendors  of  fashionable  life. 
Miss  Adams  also,  daughter  of  John 
Adams,  writes,  in  1785 :  "  Every  per 
son  who  knew  her  when  here  bestows 


SARAH  VAN  BRUGH  JAY. 


33  r 


many  encomiums  on  Mrs.  Jay.  Mad- 
ame de  la  Fayette  said  she  was  well 
acquainted  with  her,  and  very  fond  of 
her,  adding,  that  Mrs.  Jay  and  she 
thought,  alike,  that  pleasure  might  be 
found  abroad,  but  happiness  only  at 
home,  in  the  society  of -one's  family  and 
friends." 

The  venerable  Dr.  Franklin  was 
very  kind  and  attentive  to  Mrs.  Jay, 
and  there  seems  to  have  sprung  up  in 
her  mind  as  well  as  in  her  husband's, 
a  sincere  affection  for  the  aged  and 
faithful  servant  of  his  country,  and 
eminent  savan  of  his  day.  In  a  letter 
to  Jay,  at  New  York,  he  says :  "  Next 
to  the  pleasure  of  rejoining  my  own 
family,  will  be  that  of  seeing  you  and 
yours  well  and  happy,  and  embracing 
my  little  friend,  whose  singular  at- 
tachment to  me  I  shall  always  remem- 
ber. Be  pleased  to  make  my  respect- 
ful compliments  acceptable  to  Mrs. 
Jay,  and  believe  me  ever,  with  sin- 
cere and  great  respect  and  esteem, 
etc."  When  the  philosopher  returned 
to  the  United  States,  Jay  extended  to 
him  a  cordial  welcome,  and  said : 
"  Mrs.  Jay  is  exceedingly  pleased  with 
this  idea  (viz.,  a  visit  of  Franklin's  to 
New  York),  and  sincerely  joins  with 
me  in  wishing  to  see  it  realized.  Her 
attachments  are  very  strong,  and  that 
to  you  being  founded  on  esteem,  and 
the  recollection  of  kind  offices,  is  par- 
ticularly so." 

While  Jay  was  absent  in  England, 
his  wife  occupied  a  house  at  Chaillot, 
from  whence  she  wrote  in  November 
to  him  :  "  Everybody  that  sees  the 
house  is  surprised  that  it  has  so  long 
remained  unoccupied.  It  is  so  gay,  so 
lively,  that  I  am  sure  you  will  be 
43 


pleased.  Yesterday,  the  windows  were 
open  in  my  cabinet,  while  I  was  dress- 
ing, and  it  was  even  then  too  warm. 
Dr.  Franklin  and  his  grandsons,  and 
Mr.  and  Mrs.  Coxe,  and  the  Miss 
Walpoles,  drank  tea  with  me  likewise 
this  evening,  and  they  all  approve  of 
your  choice."  Again,  a  few  days  later, 
she  writes :  "  I  hope  the  weather  is 
fine  in  England,  for  we  have  a  most 
enchanting  autumn  here.  You'll  be 
pleased  with  our  situation  here  when 
you  return,  for  which  I  most  ardently 
long,  though  I  would  not  have  you  leave 
England  until  you  have  given  it  a  fair 
trial.  My  little  Nancy  is  a  perfect 
cherub,  without  making  the  least  al- 
lowance for  a  mother's  partiality." 

John  Jay's  public  duties  in  Europe 
having  reached  their  termination,  he 
very  gladly  embraced  the  opportunity 
of  returning  to  his  native  land.  He 
arrived  with  his  family  in  safety  at 
New  York,  July  24th,  1784,  and 
though  not  a  man  much  given  to  the 
display  of  feeling,  he  could  hardly 
avoid  being  struck  with  the  contrast 
between  the  state  of  things  now,  and 
when  he  left  his  home  more  than  four 
years  before.  "  At  length,"  he  said, 
"  I  am  arrived  at  the  land  of  my  na- 
tivity ;  and  I  bless  God  that  it  is  also 
the  land  of  light,  liberty  and  plenty. 
My  emotions  cannot  be  described." 

It  was  Jay's  wish  to  be  allowed  to 
retire  from  the  service  of  his  country 
as  a  public  man ;  but  his  abilities 
were  too  well  known  and  appreciated, 
and  the  necessity  of  such  service  as  he 
could  render  was  too  apparent,  to  per* 
mit  his  being  excused  as  yet ;  for  it  ia 
to  be  remembered,  that  the  years  fol 
lowing  the  treaty  of  peace,  down  to 


338 


SAEAH  VAN  BEUGH  JAY. 


the  time  of  the  formation  and  adoption 
of  the  Constitution,  and  the  organiza- 
tion of  the  Federal  Government  under 
Washington,   were   among    the   most 
critical  of  any  in  our  history,  and  de- 
manded the  exercise  of  all  the  ability, 
earnestness  and  integrity  of  our  patriot 
fathers.     John  Jay  felt  this  keenly  and 
deeply;  and    hence,    when    Congress 
called  for  his  acceptance  of  the  post 
of  Secretary  for  Foreign   Affairs,   to 
which  he  had  been  elected  before  his 
arrival  in  America,  he  obeyed  the  call, 
and  entered  manfully  upon  the  highly 
responsible  duties  of  his  office. 

The  prominent  position  and  arduous 
duties  of  her  husband,  from  this  date, 
necessitated,  on  Mrs.  Jay's  part,  an  in- 
termission of  domestic  duties  and  the 
pleasures  of  home  life ;  but  she  did  not 
murmur  or  complain.  On  the  contra- 
ry, she  took  active  charge  of  her  estab- 
lishment in  New  York,  and  was  en- 
abled, in  her  proper  sphere,  to  be  of 
essential  value  to  her  husband,  in  dis- 
charging the  duties  of  hospitality,  etc. 
Jay,  while  occupied  in  his  proper  work, 
performed  excellent  service  to  his  coun- 
try and  her  cause.  He  proposed  to  Con- 
gress a  naval  establishment ;  he  con- 
ducted negotiations  at  New  York  with 
the  Spanish  minister ;  he  reported  va- 
rious infractions  of  the  treaty  of  peace 
by  some  of  the  States ;  he  pointed  out 
clearly  the  defects  and  insufficiency  of 
the  confederation  as  then  existing; 
and  he  did  all  in  his  power  to  further 
the  design  of  calling  a  Federal  Con- 
vention and  framing  a  Constitution 
for  the  whole  country.  His  duties  at 
New  York  prevented  his  attending  as 
a  member  of  the  Convention  at  Phila- 
delphia; but  when  the  Constitution 


was  finally  agreed  upon,  he  labored 
zealously,  in  conjunction  with  Hamil- 
ton and  Madison,  in  urging  its  adop- 
tion by  all  the  States,  and  especially 
by  New  York,  the  State  in  which  he 
was  born.  This  latter,  after  a  severe 
struggle  with  the  anti-federalists,  was 
led  by  a  small  majority  to  adopt  the 
Constitution.  This  important  action 
took  place  July  26th,  1788. 

Washington  having  been  unani- 
mously elected  first  president  of  the 
United  States,  and  anxious  to  dis- 
charge the  duties  of  his  position  by 
appointing  the  best  and  most  worthy 
men  in  the  country  to  the  several 
offices  under  the  government,  asked 
John  Jay  to  accept  of  any  post  which 
he  was  willing  to  occupy.  Jay  ac- 
cordingly chose  the  chair  of  chief  jus- 
tice of  the  supreme  court  of  the  United 
States,  as  in  every  way  adapted  to  his 
course  of  legal  training  and  his  tastes, 
and  also  as  a  position  wherein  probably 
he  could  perform  the  largest  amount  of 
service  for  the  new  scheme  of  govern- 
ment now  to  be  put  upon  its  trial. 
For  the  present,  however,  at  Washing- 
ton's request,  he  consented  to  act  aa 
secretary  of  state ;  which  he  did  till 
Jefferson  returned  from  France,  in  the 
spring  of  the  next  year. 

At  the  inauguration,  which  took 
place  April  30th,  1789,  Chancellor 
Livingston  officiated  and  administered 
the  oath  of  office  to  Washington.  The 
supreme  court  was  not  fully  organiz- 
ed till  April  3rd,  1790,  and  the  next 
day  the  first  circuit  court  was  held  in 
New  York.  The  duties  of  the  chief 
justice  and  his  associates  were  arduous 
and  required  the  best  efforts  of  all  con- 
cerned ;  and  it  FJ  greatly  to  their  hon 


SARAH  VAN  BRUGH  JAY. 


or  that  they  discharged  their  high  du- 
ties with  so  great  credit  to  themselves 
and  benefit  to  their  country. 

While  Jay  was  absent  on  a  circuit  in 
New  England,  his  wife  wrote  to  him : 
"  Last  Monday,  the  president  went  to 
Long  Island  to  pass  a  week  there.  On 
Wednesday,  Mrs.  Washington  called 
upon  me  to  go  with  her  to  wait  upon 
Miss  Van  Berchel,  and  on  Thursday 
morning,  agreeable  to  an  invitation,  my- 
self and  the  little  girls  took  an  early 
breakfast  with  her,  and  then  went  with 
her  and  her  little  grandchildren  to 
breakfast  at  General  Morris',  Morrisi- 
ana.  We  passed  together  a  very  agree- 
able day,  and  on  our  return  dined  with 
her,  as  she  would  not  take  a  refusal. 
After  which  I  came  home  to  dress,  and 
she  was  so  polite  as  to  take  coffee  with 
me  in  the  evening."  In  another  letter 
she  says :  "  My  endeavor  has  been  to 
show  my  affection  for  you  by  my  at- 
tention to  your  friends." 

The  administration  of  Washington 
was  subjected  to  many  severe  trials,  in 
consequence  of  the  fierce  party  spirit 
engendered  by  the  so-called  democratic 
societies  and  the  spread  of  ultra  demo- 
cratic principles ;  the  hatred  of  Eng- 
land, incurred  by  her  high-handed  ex- 
ercise of  power  in  carrying  out  what 
she  called  "  the  right  of  search,"  and 
impressment  of  seamen;  the  extrava- 
gant adulation  toward  France,  and 
the  insolence  of  the  representative  of 
the  French  court  in  the  United  States; 
and  the  firm  resolve  of  the  president, 
based  on  what  we  can  now  see  plainly 
was  the  highest  political  wisdom,  viz., 
to  maintain  an  exact  and  impartial 
neutrality  between  contending  Euro- 
pean powers.  On.  these  matters,  how- 


ever, we  need  not  here  dwell.  They 
were  perhaps  inseparable  from  public 
affairs  at  that  time.  For  the  present 
we  are  only  concerned  in  them  as  they 
affected  the  subject  of  these  pages,  and 
her  they  did  affect  most  deeply. 

War  with  England  seemed  to  be 
imminent  and  well  nigh  inevitable ;  but 
Washington,  anxious  to  avoid  so  dire 
a  result,  in  the  then  condition  of  tho 
country,  determined  to  make  one  great 
effort  to  escape  from  the  horrors '  of 
war  and  its  consequences.  He  accord- 
ingly begged  Chief -justice  Jay  to  go 
to  England  as  a  special  envoy,  and  to 
put  forth  every  endeavor  to  effect  a 
settlement  of  difficulties  between  the 
two  countries,  on  terms  consistent  with 
national  integrity  and  honor. 

It  was  with  great  and  unfeigned  re- 
luctance that  this  onerous  appointment 
was  accepted ;  but  John  Jay  was  not 
a  man  to  flinch  when  the  voice  of  duty 
summoned  him  to  action.  "  I  feel  the 
impulse  of  duty  strongly,"  he  says, 
writing  to  his  wife,  April  15th,  1794, 
"  and  it  is  probable  that  if  on  the  in- 
vestigation I  am  now  making,  my 
mind  should  be  convinced  that  it  is 
my  duty  to  go,  you  will  join  with  me 
in  thinking,  that,  on  an  occasion  so 
important,  I  ought  to  follow  its  die- 
tates.  and  commit  mvself  to  the  care 

» 

and  kindness  of  that  Providence,  in 
which  we  have  both  the  highest  rea- 
son to  repose  the  most  absolute  confi- 
dence. This  is  not  of  my  seeking ;  on 
the  contrary,  I  regard  it  as  a  measure 
not  to  be  desired,  but  to  be  submitted 

to If  it  should  please  God 

to  make  me  instrumental  to  the  con- 
tinuance of  peace,  and  in  prevent- 
ing the  effusion  of  blood  and  othej 


540 


SARAH  VAN  BRUGH  JAY. 


evils  and  miseries  incident  to  war,  we 
shall  both  have  reason  to  rejoice.  With 
very  sincere  and  tender  affection, 

"I  am,  my  dear  Sally,  ever  yours, 

"  JOHN  JAY." 

Mrs.  Jay's  reply,  written  evidently 
under  deep  feeling  at  this  new  and  un- 
expected trial,  and  marked  by  that 
warmth  of  affection  which  character- 
izes her  entire  married  life,  was  as 
follows : — 

"  Yesterday  I  received  your  two  kind 
letters  of  Saturday  and  Sunday.  I  do 
indeed  judge  of  your  feelings  by  my 
own,  and  for  that  reason  forebore 
writing  while  under  the  first  impres- 
sion of  surprise  and  grief. 

"Your  superiority  in  fortitude,  as 
well  as  every  other  virtue,  I  am  aware 
of ;  yet  I  know  too  well  your  tender- 
ness for  your  family  to  doubt  the  pains 
of  separation.  Your  own  conflicts  are 
sufficient ;  they  need  not  be  augmented 
by  the  addition  of  mine.  Never  was  I 
more  sensible  of  the  absolute  ascend- 
ency you  have  over  my  heart.  When, 
almost  in  despair,  I  renounced  the 
hope  of  domestic  bliss,  your  image 
in  my  breast  seemed  to  upbraid  me 
with  adding  to  your  trials.  That  idea 
alone  roused  me  from  my  desponden- 
cy. I  resumed  the  charge  of  my  fami- 
ly, and  even  dare  hope  that,  by  your 
example,  I  shall  be  enabled  to  look  up 
to  that  Divine  Protector,  from  whom 
we  have  indeed  experienced  the  most 
merciful  guardianship. 

u  The  children  continue  well.  They 
were  exceedingly  affected  when  they 
received  the  tidings,  and  entreated  me 
to  endeavor  to  dissuade  you  from  ac. 
cepting  \n  appointment  that  subjects 
as  to  so  painful  a  separation. 


"  Farewell,  my  best  beloved, 
"  Your  wife  till  death, 

"  And  after  that  a  ministering 
spirit." 

The  critical  condition  of  public  af- 
fairs urged  the  immediate  departure 
of  John  Jay,  and  he  embarked  at  New 
York,  May  12th,  accompanied  by  his 
eldest  son,  and  by  Col.  Trumbull  as  his 
secretary.  In  a  month's  time  he  was 
in  England,  and  ready  to  proceed  to 
the  work  before  him.  Lord  Grenville 
was  appointed  to  conduct  the  negotia- 
tions on  the  British  side,  and  as  he 
was  a  nobleman  of  high  and  honora- 
ble character,  it  did  not  take  Jay  long 
to  ascertain  the  ground  on  which  they 
stood,  and  the  probability  of  being 
able  to  accomplish  the  objects  of  his 
mission.  Without  going  into  particu- 
lars here,  it  may  be  sufficient  to  state, 
that,  although  the  treaty  of  Jay  was 
not  all  that  the  government  of  the 
United  States  wished  and  was  enti- 
tled to,  yet  it  was  the  best  which  could 
then  be  obtained,  and  saved  the  coun- 
try from  another  bloody  war.  It  wag 
completed  between  the  negotiators  in 
November  of  the  same  year,  and  trans- 
mitted at  once  to  the  United  States. 
The  storm  of  opposition  which  it  met 
with  is  matter  of  general  history,  and 
we  cannot  but  look  back  with  feelings 
of  astonishment  and  indignation  at  the 
violence  and  scurrility  which  were  dis- 
played by  the  enemies  of  Washington. 
Thank  God,  his  firmness,  integrity  and 
patriotism  prevailed,  and  the  country 
was  spared  for  better  things  in  future. 

Jay's  health  being  rather  delicate, 
he  resolved  to  spend  the  winter  in 
England,  and  postpone  his  return  to 
America  till  the  spring  of  1795.  Thii 


SAEAH  YAN  BKUGH  JAY. 


311 


Was  an  additional  trial  to  his  loving 
wife;  but,  as  on  all  occasions  before, 
so  now  she  acquiesced  in  that  which 
seemed  to  be  for  the  best.  During  her 
husband's  absence,  he  had  been  elected 
governor  of  New  York,  so  that  when 
he  reached  his  native  land,  at  the  close 
of  May,  1795,  he  found  himself  duly 
chosen  to  fill  an  office  of  dignity  and 
trust  which  he  could  hardly  refuse  to 
accept.  He  accordingly  resigned  the 
chief-justiceship,  and  took  the  oath  as 
governor,  July  1st. 

During  John  Jay's  absence  abroad, 
his  wife  devoted  herself  to  home  du- 
ties, and  took  upon  herself  the  entire 
management  of  domestic  affairs.  In 
her  numerous  letters  to  her  husband, 
she  enters  into  various  details,  as  to 
moneys  paid  in  and  re-invested,  by  the 
advice  of  friends,  in  the  National  Bank 
and  stocks,  the  sale  of  lands,  the  pro- 
gress of  improvements  on  the  family  es- 
tate at  Bedford,  etc.  In  one  of  Jay's  let- 
ters to  his  wife,  he  writes  thus :  "  Thanks 
for  your  many  affectionate  letters  and 
unceasing  attentions  to  our  mutual  con- 
cerns. I  frequently  anticipate  with  sat- 
isfaction the  pleasing  moment  when  I 
shall  again  take  my  place  by  our  own 
fireside,  and  with  William  on  one 
knee  and  Sally  on  the  other,  amuse 
you  with  a  variety  of  information." 

On  John  Jay's  arrival  in  New  York, 
he  was  met  by  a  large  concourse  of  cit- 
izens, and  waited  upon  in  procession  to 
his  residence  in  Broadway.  This  pop- 
ular appreciation  of  his  worth  and  ser- 
vices was  very  gratifying  to  Mrs.  Jay, 
beyond  question ;  but  the  reverse,  soon 
after  happening,  afforded  her  an  oppor- 
tunity of  estimating  applause  and  abuse 
at  tLeir  true  value.  For,  it  will  be  re- 


membered, that  Jay's  treaty  was  met 
by  the  anti-federalists  with  the  most 
furious  opposition,  and  there  was  no 
possible  limit  to  the  bitterness  and 
malignity  of  the  language  used,  not 
only  towards  Washington,  but  also 
towards  Jay  for  his  share  in  the  nego- 
tiation. We  sometimes  think,  and  ex- 
press ourselves  in  such  wise,  as  if  the 
political  party  press  of  the  present  day 
were  very  much  more  indecent  and 
savage  than  in  the  times  of  Washing- 
ton and  the  great  and  good  men  of  that 
period;  but  this  is  a  mistake.  It 
would  not  be  possible  to  find  terms 
of  abuse,  invective  and  slanderous  in- 
sinuation and  imputation  of  evil  and 
base  motives,  stronger  or  more  foul- 
mouthed  than  those  which  were  free- 
ly employed  against  one  who  outlived 
all  lying  and  slandering,  and  whose 
good  name  is  a  cherished  possession  of 
every  American  heart.  In  the  case  oi 
Jay,  his  wife  was  compelled  to  kno\v 
that  unscrupulous  partisans  could  use 
such  language  as  to  call  him,  "  that 
damned  arch-traitor,  John  Jay,"  and 
that  an  excited  mob  in  its  unreasoning 
fury,  could  burn  him  in  effigy  at 
Philadelphia;  but  Mrs.  Jay,  howevei 
painful  the  trial,  bore  her  share  in  it 
uncomplainingly  and  submissively,  and 
as  nothing  was  able  to  deprive  her 
of  the  testimony  of  a  good  conscience 
and  an  upright  life,  so  she  was  content 
to  wait  till  the  storms  of  this  kind  pass- 
ed away,  and  truth  shone  out  in  all  its 
perennial  force  and  beauty. 

The  high  office  which  John  Jay  now 
occupied  imposed  severe  and  responsi- 
ble duties  upon  his  wife.  It  was  in- 
cumbent upon  her  to  preside  in  the 
executive  mansion,  which,  during  a  part 


842 

of  Jay's  governorship,   was   in   New 
York,  and  afterwards  in  Albany.     As 
was  to  be  expected,  she  filled  this  po- 
sition  with  grace  and  dignity,  and, 
added  to  her  European  experience  and 
culture  derived  from  abroad,  she  was 
in  all  respects  a  high-minded,  conscien- 
tious Christian  woman,  actuated  by 
principle,  and  therefore  uniformly  and 
consistently  courteous,  kind,  and  gen- 
tle towards  all  with  whom  she  came 
in  contact.    Mrs.  Jay  also  sympathized 
with  her  husband  in  various  measures 
which  he  advocated  and  set  forward 
during  his  administration;  such  as,  a 
law  for  the  more  general  and  prop- 
er observance  of  the  Sabbath,  a  de- 
cided  movement    towards    obtaining 
the  abolition  of  slavery,  etc. 

Although  still  in  the  prime  of  life 
(about  forty),  Mrs.  Jay's  health  be- 
came delicate  and  fluctuating.  In  1796, 
she  visited  Lebanon  Springs,  whose 
waters  had  already  obtained  a  high 
reputation,  and  by  means  of  the  rest 
and  recreation  there  obtained,  she  was 
largely  benefited.  Her  grandson,  speak- 
ing of  Mrs.  Jay,  at  this  date,  says: 
"  She  presided  over  the  reunions  of  the 
descendants  of  the  Dutch,  Huguenot 
and  English  colonists,  whose  devotion 
to  freedom  had  given  to  New  York  its 
proud  position  in  the  country ;  while 
the  wealth  and  importance  derived 
from  stately  manors,  miles  in  extent, 
and  but  recently  invested  with  almost 
baronial  privileges,  blended  with  the 
simplicity  of  the  young  Republic  so- 
cial features  that  had  something  of  the 
dignity  and  grace  usually  associated 
with  ancient  aristocracy." 

John  Jay  was  re-elected  governor  of 
New  York,  in  1798,  and  consented  to 


SAKAH  YA:NT  BKUGH  JAY. 


serve  for  a  second  term,  with  the  fixed 
intention,  however,  to  refuse  thence- 
forward any  further  public  service, 
In  December,  1800,  President  Adam? 
nominated  him  for  the  chief -justiceship 
of  the  supreme  court,  and  the  nomina- 
tion was  immediately  confirmed  by  the 
Senate ;  but,  although  earnestly  urged 
by  the  president  to  accept  the  post,  he 
promptly  and  decidedly  declined.  In 
the  spring  of  1801,  he  removed  from 
Albany  to  his  estate  at  Bedford,  which 
he  had  inherited  from  his  ancestors, 
and  where  he  proposed  to  spend  the 
remainder  of  his  life  in  retirement,  and 
in  the  enjoyments  of  home  and  home 
pleasures.  The  estate,  about  fifty  miles 
north  of  New  York  city,  had  been  much 
neglected  in  consequence  of  Jay's  con- 
tinual absence  on  the  public  service. 
Hence,  repairs  and  improvements  were 
absolutely  requisite,  and,  as  Mrs.  Jay's 
health  was  by  no  means  vigorous,  he 
would  not  allow  her  to  come  to  Bed- 
ford till  everything  was  in  order,  and 
the  new  mansion,  which  he  had  recent- 
ly begun,  was  fully  complete,  and  ready 
for  her  occupancy. 

Writing  to  Mrs.  Jay,  soon  after  his 
arrival  at  Bedford,  he  says :  "  The 
noise  and  hurry  of  carpenters,  masons 
and  laborers,  in  and  about  the  house, 
are  inconveniences  to  be  submitted  to, 
but  not  to  be  chosen  by  convalescents 
or  invalids.  When  our  buildings  are 
finished,  and  things  put  in  order,  there 
will  be  an  end  of  many  disagreeable 
embarrassments.  I  hope,  before  the 
conclusion  of  the  year,  we  shall  all  be 
together  again.  Except  going  to  meet- 
ing on  Sundays,  I  have  not  been  even 
once  from  home  since  I  came  here.  I 
find  myself  engaged,  by  and  in  the 


i  


SAKAH  YAU  BRUGH  JAY. 


343 


business  now  going  on,  from  morning 
till  night." 

Mrs.  Jay,  of  course,  wrote  frequent-  • 
ly  to  her  husband.  In  one  letter  she 
thus  expresses  herself :  "  Say  every- 
thing to  our  dearest  daughter  (Anne), 
that  a  fond  and  delighted  mother  could 
express.  Thank  her  for  her  charming 
letter.  No  cordials  could  have  so  sal- 
utary an  effect  on  my  spirits  as  the 
dear  letters  I  receive  from  you  both. 
I  have  perused  and  re-perused  them 
twenty  times  at  least."  In  another  let- 
ter, some  months  later,  she  says:  "I 
have  been  rendered  very  happy  by  the 
company  of  our  dear  children;  but, 
could  we  have  been  together,  it  would 
have  heightened  the  satisfaction.  .  .  . 
I  often,  I  should  say,  daily,  bless  God 
for  giving  us  such  amiable  children. 
May  they  long  be  preserved  a  blessing 
to  us  and  in  the  community." 

Soon  after,  Mrs.  Jay  found  her 
health  sufficiently  restored  to  permit 
her  to  rejoin  her  family  at  Bedford. 
This  she  was  delighted  to  do,  and  she 
bade  farewell  to  the  busy  world  of 
society,  without  regret,  a,nd  with  un- 
feigned satisfaction.  Her  health, 
though  not  strong,  was  much  improv- 
ed, and,  humanly  speaking,  there  was 
every  reason  to  think  that  she  might 
be  spared  for  many  years  to  enjoy 
the  calm  and  blessed  sunshine  of 
peace  and  quiet  in  her  rural  home. 
But  in  the  dispensation  of  God's  provi- 
dence, it  was  not  so  to  be.  Within 
less  than  a  year,  she  was  seized  with  a 
severe  illness,  and  expired  May  28th, 
1802.  Her  husband  was  watching  at 
her  side  when  she  died;  and  having 


like  hope  with  her  of  salvation  through 
the  Blessed  Redeemer,  he  gave  full  ut- 
terance, in  the  presence  of  his  children, 
to  the  joyful  hope  of  a  resurrection  at 
the  last  day,  and  a  never  ending  re- 
union with  her  whom  God  had  just 
called  away  from  earth  and  earthly 
cares  and  troubles. 

In  concluding  this  brief  memoir,  it 
needs  hardly  a  word  further,  in  order 
to  point  out  the  high  character  and 
admirable  qualities  of  the  wife  of  John 
Jay.  Her  letters  display  a  charming 
delicacy  and  sensibility,  mingled  with 
strength  of  mind  and  acuteness  of  per- 
ception rarely  surpassed.  Sincerely 
and  truly  a  Christian,  she  was  enabled 
to  bear  trials  and  disappointments 
without  murmuring,  and  to  regulate 
her  whole  life  by  the  principles  of  un- 
erring truth  and  rectitude.  As  a  wife 
and  mother,  she  was  faithful,  tender, 
and  loving ;  and  as  one  occupying  the 
high  position  which  she  did,  and  which 
brought  her  into  contact  with  the  gay, 
the  fashionable,  and  those  who  seem 
to  live  for  the  present  hour  alone,  she 
was  all  that  a  Christian  woman  could 
be,  preserving  her  simplicity,  purity 
and  gentleness  untarnished,  and  when 
the  proper  time  came,  cheerfully  and 
gladly  retiring  from  the  busy  and  dis- 
tracting world.  Of  her  it  may  be  said, 
as  of  the  wives  of  Washington  and 
Adams,  that  she  was  worthy  to  be  the 
companion  and  fellow-laborer  with  the 
noble  patriots  of  our  early  history: 
"her  price  was  above  rubies:"  "her 
children  arise  up  and  call  her  bless- 
ed ;  her  husband  also,  and  he  praiseth 
her." 


NAPOLEON    BON  APARTE. 


ATAPOLEON  BUONAPARTE,  or 
JrN  BONAPARTE,  was  born  at 
Ajaccio,  in  Corsica,  on  the  15th  of  Au- 
gust, 1769.  He  was  descended  from  a 
patrician  family,  which  had  been  of 
some  note  in  Italy  during  the  middle 
ages;  and  one  of  his  ancestors,  the 
gonfaloniere  Buonaparte  of  San  Nicolo, 
had  governed  the  republic  of  Florence 
about  the  middle  of  the  thirteenth  cen- 
tury. His  father,  Carlo  Buonaparte, 
was  an  advocate  of  considerable  repu- 
tation ;  and  his  mother,  Letizia  Ramo- 
lini,  was  eminent  alike  for  personal 
beauty  and  uncommon  strength  of 
character.  When  the  Corsicans  under 
Paoli  rose  in  arms  to  assert  their  lib- 
erty against  the  pretensions  of  France, 
Carlo  Buonaparte  espoused  the  popular 
side ;  and  through  all  the  toils  and  dan- 
gers of  his  mountain  campaigns  was  at- 
tended by  his  lovely  and  high-spirited 
wife.  Upon  the  termination  of  the  war, 
the  father  of  Napoleon  meditated  ac- 
companying Paoli  into  exile ;  but  his  re- 
lations dissuaded  him  from  taking  this 
step ;  and  being  afterwards  reconciled 
to  the  conquering  party,  he  was  pro- 
tected and  patronized  by  the  Comte  de 
Marboeuf,  the  French  governor  of  Cor- 
sica. Napoleon  was  the  second  ?hild 

(344) 


of  his  parents  —  Joseph,  afterwards 
King  of  Spain,  being  the  eldest  born ; 
but  he  had  three  younger  brothers, 
Lucien,  Louis,  and  Jerome ;  and  three 
sisters,  Eliza,  Caroline,  and  Pauline. 
Five  others  appear  to  have  died  in  in- 
fancy ;  and  at  the  age  of  thirty,  Letizia 
became  a  widow  by  the  death  of  her 
husband,  who  seems  to  have  left  his 
family  but  indifferently  provided  for. 

In  his  early  years  Napoleon  betrayed 
no  marked  singularity;  and  when  his 
character  began  to  be  formed,  its  de- 
velopment was  too  profound  and  too 
essentially  intellectual  to  attract  the 
notice  of  ordinary  observers.  At  the 
age  of  ten  he  was  admitted  to  the  Mil- 
itary  School  of  Brienne,  where  he 
spent  several  years  devoted  to  his 
studies,  and  afterwards  removed  to  a 
similar  institution  at  Paris,  where  he 
appears  to  have  completed  his  educa- 
tion. 

His  birth  having  destined  him  for 
service,  Napoleon  had  just  completed 
his  sixteenth  year,  when,  in  August, 
1785,  after  being  examined  by  Laplace, 
he  obtained  his  first  commission  as 
lieutenant  of  artillery  in  the  regiment 
of  La  Fere.  He  was  already  desirous 
of  fame,  and  had  conceived  the  idea  of 


If  a 


th   the  | 
;   but  a? 


of  } 


. 

• 

' 


mom 


-•ted 


NAPOLEON  BONAPARTE. 


impossible,  however,  to  come  to  an  ar- 
rangement with  the  staff  of  the  army 
of  the  Alps  ;  but  Napoleon  indemnified 
himself  by  carrying  the  army  of  Italy 
as  far  as  Savona,  and  to  the  gates  of 
Ceva ;  by  which  means  he  disengaged 
Genoa,  then  threatened  by  the  allies, 
and  would  have  achieved  more  impor- 
tant results  had  not  his  progress  been 
stopped  by  the  approach  of  winter  and 
the  imperative  orders  of  the  committee. 
He  was  superseded  on  the  6th  of  Au- 
gust, 1794,  apparently  in  consequence 
of  the  labors  of  Aubry,  who  had  re- 
formed the  organization  of  the  army, 
in  order  to  impart  to  it  greater  solid- 
ity. 

Before  the  end  of  the  year  he  went 
to  Paris  in  order  to  solicit  employment, 
but  at  first  experienced  a  very  cold  re- 
ception, probably  on  account  of  his 
supposed  connection  with  Robespierre, 
with  whose  younger  brother  he  was 
known  to  have  lived  on  terms  of  friend- 
ship. The  re-action  consequent  on  the 
downfall  of  that  extraordinary  person- 
age was  then  at  its  height,  and  threat- 
ened France  with  evils  not  less  terrible 
than  those  from  which  it  had  just  es- 
caped. Everything  was  in  an  unset- 
tled state,  and  the  monthly  renewal 
of  the  Committee  of  Public  Safety 
served  only  to  increase  the  confusion. 
After  a  time,  however,  Napoleon  was 
placed  amongst  the  generals  of  infantry 
appointed  to  serve  in  La  Vendee ;  but 
he  refused  to  act  in  a  situation  which 
he  considered  as  altogether  unsuitable 
to  him,  and  resolved  to  remain  at  Paris, 
where  he  might  be  more  usefully  em- 
ployed. This  proved  a  fortunate  de- 
termination and  soon  led  to  service  of 
a  more  congenial  kind.  Kellermann 


had  just  allowed  himself  to  be  beaten 
in  the  Apennines.  The  committee 
were  anxious  to  repair  the  disaster, 
and  with  this  view  attached  Napoleon 
to  the  board  of  military  operations, 
with  orders  to  prepare  such  instruc- 
tions as  might  seem  calculated  to  bring 
back  victory  to  the  national  standards. 
This  afforded  him  an  opportunity  of 
making  his  talents  known,  and  prob- 
ably contributed  not  a  little  to  the  fu 
ture  advancement  of  his  fortunes. 
Soon  afterwards,  he  was  appointed  to 
command  a  brigade  of  artillery  in  Hol- 
land, where  for  some  time  the  war 
had  languished;  but  before  he  could 
avail  himself  of  this  appointment,  his 
services  were  required  upon  a  nearer 
and  more  important  field  of  action. 

During  the  contest  between  the 
Convention  and  the  sections  of  Paris 
it  was  proposed  to  Napoleon  to  com- 
mand, under  Barras,  the  armed  force 
destined  to  act  against  the  Parisians. 
He  consented,  upon  condition  of  being 
left  free  from  all  interference,  and  lost 
not  a  moment  in  sending  to  Meudon 
for  the  artillery.  He  had  5000  men 
and  40  pieces  of  cannon,  a  force  more 
than  sufficient  to  put  down  a  riot,  but 
not  too  much  against  a  national  guard 
well  armed,  and  provided  with  artil 
lery;  and  he  was  reinforced  by  1500 
patriots,  organized  in  three  battalions. 

On  the  13th  of  Vendemiaire  (4th  of 
October,  1795),  the  sectionaries  march- 
ed, nearly  30,000  strong,  against  the 
Convention.  One  of  their  columns,  de- 
bouching in  the  Rue  Saint-Honore,  ad 
vanced  boldly  to  the  attack;  but  it 
was  instantly  check  sd  by  the  fire  of  the 
artillery,  which  swept  the  street  with 
grapeshot,  and  soon  afterwards  it  gave 


348 


NAPOLEON  BONAPARTE. 


way  in  confusion.     A  number  of  the 
fugitives  attempted  to  make  a  stand  on 
the  steps  of  the  church  of  St.  Eoche, 
where,  owing  to  the  narrowness  of  the 
street,  they  were  in  a  great  measure 
sheltered  from  the  fire  of  the  artillery. 
Napoleon,  however,  promptly  brought 
a  gun  to  bear  upon  them,  and  in  a  few 
minutes  this  crowd  was  dispersed,  leav- 
ing behind  them  a  number  of  dead. 
The  column  which  debouched  by  the 
Port-Royal   was  not  more   fortunate. 
Exposed  to  the  direct  fire  of  the  guns 
stationed  below  the  Tuileries,  and  tak- 
en in  flank  by  that  of  the  other  batteries 
by  which  the  bridge  was  commanded, 
all  its  efforts  to  establish  itself  upon 
the  quays  of  the  Seine  proved  unavail- 
ing, and,  after  a  very  short  struggle,  it 
dispersed,  and  fled  in   all  directions. 
In  less  than  an  hour  the  whole  was 
ended,  and  the  Convention  victorious. 
This  event,  so  trivial  in  itself,   and 
which  scarcely  cost  200  men  on  each 
side,  had  important  consequences.     It 
prevented  the  revolution  from  retro- 
grading ;  it  enabled  the  Convention  to 
disarm  the  sections ;  and,  above  all,  it 
had  a  marked  influence  upon  the  future 
fortunes  of   Napoleon.     The   eminent 
service  he  had  rendered  was  immedia- ' 
tely  rewarded  with  the  rank  of  gener- 
al of  division ;  in  five  days  he  was  nam- 
ed second  in  command  of  the  army  of 
the  interior ;  and  soon  afterwards,  on 
the  resignation  of  Barras,  he  was  ad- 
vanced to  the  chief  command.     He  had 
now  passed  into  the  order  of  marked 
and  distinguished  men.     But  the  situ- 
ation which  he  held  was  by  no  means 
suited  to   his  views.      He   longed  to 
make  war  upon  a  more  extended  thea- 
tre of  action,  and  to  profit  by  the  ad- 


vantages  which  fortune  had  thrown 
in  his  way. 

It  was  at  this  time,  when  his  resi 
dence  in  Paris  had  begun  to  appear  in 
supportable  to  his  active  mind,  that  he 
became  acquainted  with  the  widow  of 
General  Beauharnais,  whom  he  after- 
wards married.  At  the  moment  when 
the  sections  were  disarmed,  the  sword 
of  her  husband,  who  had  perished  by 
the  guillotine,  a  victim  of  the  tyranny 
of  Robespierre,  had  been  taken  from 
her ;  and  she  now  sent  her  son  Eugene, 
a  boy  of  fifteen,  to  beg  that  it  might  be 
restored  to  her.  Her  request  was  at 
once  complied  with,  and  the  boy  shed 
tears  as  he  received  from  the  hands  of 
Napoleon  the  sword  of  his  unfortunate 
father.  This  scene  touched  Napoleon ; 
and,  having  gone  to  give  an  account  of  it 
to  the  mother  of  Eugene,  he  was  so  en- 
chanted with  her  elegance  and  grace, 
that  he  soon  afterwards  made  her  a 
tender  of  his  hand,  which  was  accepted. 
The  marriage  took  place  on  the  9th  of 
March,  1796,  only  a  few  days  before 
he  set  out  to  assume  the  command  of 
the  army  of  Italy. 

Napoleon  quitted  his  wife  ten  days 
after  their  marriage,  and,  after  a  rapid 
journey,  arrived  at  the  head-quarters 
of  the  army  at  Nice.  With  that  mo- 
ment began  the  most  brilliant  scene  of 
his  entire  career.  "  In  three  months," 
said  he,  "  I  shall  be  either  at  Milan  or 
at  Paris ;"  and  before  a  year  elapsed, 
he  had  grown  old  in  victory.  In  the 
course  of  eighteen  months  he  made  six 
successful  campaigns,  destroyed  five 
Austrian  armies,  and  conquered  nearly 
the  whole  of  Italy.  He  obliged  the 
Pope  and  other  Italian  sovereigns  to 
send  their  choicest  treasures  of  ait  to 


JNAPOLEON  BONAPARTE. 


349 


Paris,  a  measure  imitated  from  ancient 
Rome,  and  savoring  more  of  the  spirit 
of  ancient  conquest,  than  of  the  miti- 
gated warfare  of  modern  times.  Among 
the  more  memorable  battles  fought 
during  this  war,  were  those  of  Lodi, 
Roveredo,  Arcole,  Rivoli,  and  Taglia- 
mento.  Bonaparte's  activity  and  skill 
counterbalanced  the  numerical  inferi- 
ority of  his  troops ;  and  his  personal 
courage,  and  readiness  of  resources  un- 
der difficulties,  procured  him  a  great 
ascendancy  over  the  soldiery,  by  whom 
he  was  familiarly  called  the  "Little 
Corporal." 

The  plan  which  he  proposed  for  the 
campaign  united  all  suffrages;  for, 
though  at  once  bold  and  original,  it 
was  in  reality  extremely  simple.  Its 
distinctive  characteristic  consisted  in 
the  mode  by  which  it  was  proposed  to 
gain  access  to  the  fertile  regions  of 
Italy.  Former  invaders  had  uniformly 
penetrated  the  Alps  at  some  point  or 
other  of  that  mighty  range  of  moun- 
tains. Napoleon  judged  that  the  same 
end  might  be  more  easily  attained  by 
turning  them ;  that  is,  by  advancing 
along  the  narrow  gorge  of  compara- 
tively level  country  which  intervenes 
between  these  huge  barriers  and  the 
Mediterranean,  and  by  forcing  a  pas- 
sage at  that  point  where  the  last  ele- 
vations of  the  Alps  pass  by  gradual 
transition  into  the  first  and  lowest  of 
the  Apennine  range.  By  the  treaty  of 
Campo-Formio,  concluded  on  the  3d  of 
October,  1797,  Austria  yielded  to 
France  Belgium  and  the  boundaries  of 
the  Rhin  3  and  the  Alps,  recognized  the 
Cisalpine  republic,  and  received,  as  an 
Indemnification  for  the  loss  of  terri- 
tory, Venice  and  her  Italian  provinces ; 


whilst  France  assumed  the  sovereignty 
of  Dalmatia  and  the  Ionian  Islands. 

Napoleon  having  thus  terminated 
the  most  wonderful  series  of  cam- 
paigns recorded  in  the  history  of  war, 
set  out  for  Paris,  where  he  arrived  in 
the  beginning  of  December.  The  re- 
ception which  he  met  with,  on  this  oc- 
casion, was  such  as  would  have  elated 
the  most  modest,  and  encouraged  the 
least  ambitious.  It  was  easy  to  see 
that  he  might  aspire  to  everything  in 
France.  Nevertheless,  the  time  had 
not  yet  arrived  to  profit  by  his  fame, 
and  take  advantage  of  his  popularity ; 
it  was  necessary  to  wait  until  the  Di- 
rectory had  completed  its  discredit 
with  the  country,  and  lost  all  hold  of 
public  opinion.  France  had  indeed 
proclaimed  him  as  its  hero;  but  this 
was  not  enough,  and  to  become  the 
head  of  the  state,  it  was  necessary  to 
be  at  the  same  time"  its  deliverer  and 
restorer. 

During  the  negotiations  at  Campo- 
Formio,  Napoleon  had  suggested  the 
idea  of  a  descent  upon  Egypt,  though 
he  did  not  think  of  undertaking  it 
himself.  The  project  had  been  relished 
by  Talleyrand,  who  had  succeeded  to 
the  ministry  of  foreign  affairs.  Napo- 
leon now  offered  to  carry  it  into  exe- 
cution. Europe  he  considered  as  but 
a  mole-hill  in  comparison  of  Asia, 
whence  "  all  the  great  glories  "  had 
come.  And  from  the  view  which  he 
took  of  the  state  of  India  at  the  time^ 
he  conceived,  that  in  undertaking  to 
open  a  direct  communication  with  that 
country  he  was  taking  the  surest  means 
to  strike  an  effective  blow  at  England. 
The  expedition  to  Egypt  had  three  ob- 
jects :  first,  to  establish  on  the  Nile  a 


350 


NAPOLEON  BONAPAKTE. 


French  colony,  which,  without  having 
recourse  to  the  system  of  cultivation 
by  slaves,  should  supply  the  produce 
of  St.  Domingo  and  the  sugar  islands ; 
secondly,  to  open  new  outlets  for 
French  manufactures  in  Africa,  Ara- 
bia, and  Syria,  and  to  obtain,  in  return, 
all  the  productions  of  those  countries ; 
and,  thirdly,  setting  out  from  Egypt  as 
a  base  of  operations,  to  carry  an  army 
of  fifty  thousand  men  to  the  Indus, 
and  make  common  cause  with  the  Mah- 
rattas,  the  Hindus,  the  Mussulmans, 
and  all  the  oppressed  races  of  the  In- 
dian peninsula. 

Egypt,  it  is  true,  was  then  a  tributary 
of  the  Porte,  one  of  the  most  ancient 
allies  of  France ;  but  as  the  Mamelukes 
were  the  real  masters  of  the  country, 
and  in  open  revolt  against  the  Sultan, 
it  was  thought  that  the  Divan,  already 
occupied  with  the  war  against  Paswan 
Oglou,    pasha    of"  Widin,    and    that 
against  the  Wahabees,    and   obliged, 
from  weakness,  to  tolerate  the  inde- 
pendence of  a  number  of  refractory 
pashas,  would  not,  for  a  mere  shadow 
of  sovereignty,   throw   itself   blindly 
into  the  rank  .  of  the  enemy.     The  pre- 
parations were  accordingly  carried  on 
with  great  activity,  but  with  the  ut- 
most secrecy.     All  was  under  the  di- 
rection of  Napoleon,  and  his  character- 
istic energy  everywhere  appeared.    To 
draw  the  attention  of  England  from 
the   ports   of  the   Mediterranean,   he 
visited  those  of  the  Channel,  and  af- 
fected to  occupy  himself  with  the  pro- 
ject  of  crossing  it,  when  his  thoughts 
were  directed  towards  the  invasion  of 
Egypt.      For  this   purpose,   in   May, 
1798,  a  splendid  armament  was  equip- 
at  Toulon,  with  every  requisite  for 


colonizing  the  country  and  prosecuting 
scientific  and  antiquarian  researches. 
He  reached  Egypt  in  July,  expelled, 
after  several  hard-fought  battles,  the 
dominant  military  caste  of  Mamelukes, 
and  made  subjects  of  the  native  Egyp- 
tians. His  administration,  except  in  an 
absurd  attempt  to  conciliate  the  natives 
by  professing  Mohammedanism,  was 
that  of  a  wise  and  politic  statesman ; 
and  there  was  every  prospect  that  the 
French,  although  insulated  from  Eu- 
rope by  the  destruction  of  their  fleet  at 
Aboukir,  would  permanently  establish 
themselves  in  Egypt.  Many  improve- 
ments, by  which  the  country  has  since 
derived  signal  benefit,  were  introduced 
by  him ;  and  to  the  scientific  depart- 
ment of  the  expedition  we  are  indebted 
for  the  foundation  of  our  present  knowl- 
edge of  the  natural  history  and  anti- 
quities of  Egypt.  Early  in  1799,  Bo 
naparte  apprised  Tippoo  Saib  of  his  de- 
sign of  marching  against  the  British  in 
India.  The  hostilities  of  the  Ottoman 
Porte  induced  him,  however,  to  invade 
Syria.  After  crossing  the  desert,  and 
taking  El-Arish,  Jaffa,  and  Gaza,  he 
was  repulsed  at  Acre  by  Sir  Sidney 
Smith,  and  compelled  to  make  a  dis- 
astrous retreat  on  Egypt. 

The  destruction  of  the  Turkish  army 
having  consolidated  the  position  of  the 
French  in  Egypt,  Napoleon  decided  on 
returning  to  France.  Even  when  be- 
fore St.  Jean  D'Acre,  he  ascertained 
that  a  new  coalition  had  been  formed ; 
and  at  a  later  period  he  received, 
through  Sir  Sidney  Smith,  several 
English  journals,  and  the  French  ga- 
zette of  Frankfort,  which  informed  him 
of  the  reverses  sustained  by  the  armies 
of  Italy  and  the  Rhine,  as  well  as  oi 


NAPOLEON  BONAPAKTE. 


351 


the  successive  revolutions  which  had 
completed  the  disorganization  and  de- 
basement of  the  Directory.  The  con- 
summation which  he  had  contemplated 
before  leaving  France  seemed  to  have 
at  length  arrived ;  and  no  obstacle 
stood  in  the  way  to  prevent  his  return 
to  that  country.  Having  left  the  chief 
command  to  Kleber,  Napoleon  sailed 
from  Alexandria  on  the  24th  of  Au- 
gust, 1799,  with  a  small  squadron  of 
four  ships,  and,  after  a  passage  full  of 
marvellous  escapes,  landed  at  Frejus 
on  the  6th  of  October.  His  presence 
excited  the  enthusiasm  of  the  people, 
and  was  considered  by  them  as  the 
certain  pledge  of  victory.  His  pro- 
gress to  the  capital  had  all  the  appear- 
ance of  a  triumphal  procession,  and, 
upon  reaching  Paris,  he  found  that 
everything  was  ripe  for  a  great  change 
in  France. 

The  necessity  of  a  change  in  the  ex- 
isting order  of  things  had  for  some 
time  been  generally  felt  and  acknowl- 
edged. The  Directorial  government 
having  lost  all  hold  on  public  opinion, 
and  become  equally  feeble  and  con. 
temptible,  it  seemed  necessary  to  re- 
place it  by  an  imposing  authority ;  and 
there  is  none  so  much  so  as  that  which 
is  founded  upon  military  glory.  Na- 
poleon perceived  this  in  all  its  force. 
The  Directory  could  only  be  replaced 
by  him  or  by  anarchy;  and,  in  such  a 
case,  the  choice  of  France  could  not 
for  a  moment  be  doubtful.  Accord- 
ingly, all  parties  now  ranged  them- 
selves under  two  distinct  banners ;  on 
the  one  side  were  the  republicans,  who 
opposed  his  elevation;  and  on  the 
other  all  France,  which  demanded  it. 
A  coup  d'etat  was  nevertheless  neces- 


sary to  produce  the  revolution  of  the 
18th  of  Brumaire ;  and  this  was  effect- 
ed by  the  employment  of  the  troops, 
although  without  spilling  a  drop  of 
blood.  Napoleon  had  for  a  moment 
hoped  that  the  projected  change  would 
.be  carried  by  acclamation.  He  was 
disappointed.  But,  after  a  short  and 
noisy  struggle,  the  republic,  born 
amidst  anarchy,  and  baptized  in  blood, 
expired  in  clamor  and  uproar — Sieyes 
assisting  in  the  demolition  of  his  own 
work ;  and  the  Directory  was  replaced 
by  a  provisional  consulate,  with  Na- 
poleon at  its  head.  The  dissolution  of 
the  councils  was  followed  by  the  ap- 
pointment of  a  legislative  commission, 
and  to  a  committee  of  this  body  was 
assigned  the  task  of  preparing  a  new 
constitution,  which  was  afterwards  de- 
nominated that  of  the  year  VIII. 

Great  as  had  been  the  ability  dis- 
played by  Napoleon  in  the  field,  few 
expected  that  he  would  evince  equal 
talents  and  aptitude  for  government. 
At  the  very  first  meeting  of  the  con- 
suls, a  lengthened  discussion  took 
place  concerning  the  internal  condi- 
tion and  foreign  relations  of  France, 
and  the  measures  not  only  of  war,  but 
of  finance  and  diplomacy,  which  it 
either  was  or  might  be  expedient  to 
adopt.  To  the  astonishment  of  Sieyes, 
Napoleon  entered  fully  into  all  these 
subjects,  showed  perfect  familiarity 
with  them  even  in  their  minutest  de- 
tails, and  suggested  various  resolutions, 
which  it  was  impossible  not  to  ap- 
prove. "  Gentlemen,'  says  Sieyes,  on 
reaching  his  house,  wnere  Talleyrand 
and  others  awaited  his  arrival,  "  I  per- 
ceive that  you  have  found  a  master; 
one  who  can  do  and  will  do  everything 


352 


NAPOLEON  BONAPARTE. 


himself."   The  work  of  reform  proceed- 
ed rapidly  and  surely :  order  was  every- 
where established,  and  vigor  infused 
into  all  the  departments  of  the  state. 
The  situation  of  France,  however,  oc- 
casioned him  some  disquietude;  and, 
notwithstanding  the  chances  of  success 
in  his  favor,  he  resolved  to  sue  for 
peace,  which  he  could  then  do  in  good 
faith,  because  the  misfortunes  of  the 
preceding  campaigns  were  not  his  work. 
But  Pitt  turned  a  deaf  ear  to  the  ap- 
plication, and  by  this  refusal  obliged 
Napoleon  to  enter  upon  that  course  of 
victory  and  conquest  which  ultimately 
extended  his  empire  over  the  greater 
part  of  the  Continent. 

In  1800,  he  marched  an  army  across 
the  Alps  by  the  route  of  the  Great  St. 
Bernard,  descended  unexpectedly  on 
the  rear  of  the  Austrians,  and,  June 
1 4th,  gave  them  a  complete  overthrow 
at  Marengo.  Having  recovered  nearly 
all  the  former  conquests  of  the  French 
by  this  battle,  he  returned  to  Paris  to 
avail  himself  of  this  triumph  to  ad- 
vance his  power.  But  the  rejection  of 
the  overtures  of  the  Bourbons,  and  the 
obvious  design  of  Bonaparte  to  appro- 
priate the  crown  to  himself,  led  to  a 
union  between  the  Royalists  and  Jaco- 
bins; and  plots  were  formed  against 
his  life,  from  one  of  which  he  narrowly 
escaped.  In  November  he  resumed 
hostilities  against  Austria;  and  the 
battle  of  Hohenlinden,  gained  by  Mo- 
reau,  December  2d,  concluded  the  war. 
Austria  then  acknowledged  the  Cisal- 
pine Republic,  and  permitted  France 
to  possess  the  boundary  of  the  Rhine, 
and  to  annex  Holland  to  her  domin- 
ions. The  war,  continued  by  England, 
was  distinguished  for  the  battle  of  Co- 


penhagen, fought  April  2d,  1801,  by 
which  the  Northern  Maritime  Confed- 
eracy was  broken  up ;  and  for  the  re- 
covery of  Egypt  from  the  French  by 
the  army  of  Abercrombie :  it  was  end- 
ed in  1802,  by  the  Treaty  of  Amiens. 

During  this  short  cessation  of  arms, 
the  attention  of  the  First  Consul  was 
occupied  with  the  re-establishment  of 
religion,  and  the  arrangement  of  a  con- 
cordat with  the  pope.  The  churches 
were  deserted  and  in  ruins ;  and  since 
the  famous  civil  constitution  of  1791, 
the  clergy  had  been  in  a  state  of  com- 
plete schism.  His  object  was  to  restore 
the  one  and  to  reconcile  the  other,  but 
without  suffering  them  to  acquire  the 
power  and  influence  they  had  formerly 
possessed.  His  next  measure  was  the 
establishment  of  a  system  of  national 
education ;  and  this  was  followed  by 
the  commencement  of  the  great  and 
difficult  but  highly  important  task  of 
providing  France  with  a  uniform  code  of 
laws.  .  One  of  the  various  remarkable 
codes  known  generally  under  the  col 
lective  designation  of  Code  Napoleon, 
the  code  civil  de  jFrangais,  is  unques- 
tionably the  best.  It  has  continued 
hitherto  to  be  the  law  of  France,  and 
is  perhaps  the  most  valuable  result  of 
his  extraordinary  reign.  It  was  his 
own  proud  anticipation  that  he  would 
go  down  to  posterity  with  the  codes  in 
his  hand,  and  in  this  he  was  not  mis- 
taken. Innumerable  works  of  public 
utility  were  likewise  begun.  Roads 
and  bridges  were  planned;  museums 
were  founded ;  and  the  vain  were  grat- 
ified with  rising  monuments  of  magnifi- 
cence, whilst  the  reflecting  recognized 
in  every  such  display  the  depth  and 
forecast  of  a  genius  formed  for  empire. 


NAPOLEON  BONAPARTE. 


353 


This  was  more  fully  evinced  in  the 
measures  by  which  Napoleon  sought 
to  secure  the  prolongation  of  his  pow- 
er. The  establishment  of  the  consu- 
late for  life,  which  was  decreed  on  the 
2d  of  August,  1802,  proved  a  grand 
step  towards  the  completion  of  his  de- 
sign, and  formed  the  primary  base  of 
the  edifice  which  it  yet  remained  for 
him  to  construct.  This  dignity  had 
already  been  prorogated  for  ten  years 
by  a  senatus-consultum  of  the  6th  of 
May ;  but  on  referring  the  matter  to  the 
people,  it  was  decided  that  the  consu- 
late should  be  conferred  upon  him  for 
life.  He  was  now  virtually  sovereign 
of  France.  His  task  was  to  terminate 
the  Revolution  by  giving  to  it  a  legal 
character,  that  it  might  be  recognized 
and  legitimated  by  the  public  law  of 
Europe.  He  instituted,  likewise,  a 
new  order  of  chivalry,  called  the  Le- 
gion of  Honor,  which,  if  it  served  to 
further  his  scheme  of  empire,  did  not 
militate  with  that  equality  which 
alone  he  sought  to  maintain. 

On  the  18th  of  May,  1803,  Great 
Britain  declared  war  against  France ; 
and  that  fierce  contest  recommenced, 
which,  after  an  unexampled  career  of 
victory  on  the  part  of  Napoleon,  was 
destined  to  terminate  in  his  downfall. 
His  first  measures  were,  the  occupa- 
tion of  Naples  and  of  Hanover ;  and  his 
next  project  was  one  of  a  far  more- 
daring  and  formidable  character,  name- 
ly, that  of  invading  England,  and  thus 
striking  a  blow  at  the  heart  of  his  in- 
veterate and  implacable  enemy.  The 
English  ministry  were  not  without  se- 
rious apprehensions  as  to  the  result  of 
the  threatened  invasion ;  and  to  cause 
a  diversion,  they  are  said  to  have  coun- 
45 


tenanced  the  unwarrantable  warfare  of 
plots  and  conspiracies.  Finding  him- 
self exposed  to  the  attempts  of  despe- 
radoes who  aimed  at  his  life,  Napoleon 
resolved  to  deal  a  decisive  blow,  which 
he  considered  as  indispensable  to  strike 
.terror  into  his  enemies.  A  distinguish- 
ed Bourbon  was  at  the  gates  of  Stras- 
burg;  the  police  pretended  to  have 
discovered  evidence  which  implicated 
him  in  the  designs  of  those  who  had 
plotted  against  the  life  of  the  First 
Consul :  and  under  the  first  excite- 
ment produced  by  this  information, 
the  fatal  command  was  issued  to  seize 
the  prince  and  bring  him  to  Paris. 
The  order  was  promptly  obeyed,  and 
the  Due  d'Enghien,  having  been  seized 
at  Ettenheim,  in  the  territory  of  Baden, 
was  carried  to  Paris,  where  on  his  ar- 
rival he  was  tried  by  a  military  com- 
mission, as  an  emigrant  who  had  borne 
arms  against  France,  condemned,  and 
shot  almost  immediately  after  the  sen- 
tence had  been  pronounced.  This  was 
the  most  unwarrantable  occurrence  in 
the  life  of  Napoleon.  That  he  was 
misled  by  the  infamous  reports  of  the 
secret  police,  and  by  the  perfidious 
suggestions  of  those  around  him,  may 
perhaps  be  true ;  indeed,  there  is  good 
reason  to  believe  that  such  was  the 
case.  He  was  likewise  kept  in  igno- 
rance of  the  afflicting  circumstances 
which  accompanied  the  catastrophe; 
and  the  appeal  made  to  his  clemency 
by  the  unfortunate  prince  was  infa- 
mously withheld  until  after  the  sacri- 
fice of  the  ill-fated  victim  had  been 
consummated ;  but,  with  every  allow- 
ance which  can  justly  be  made,  it  must 
nevertheless  be  admitted  that,  in  com- 
manding the  seizure  of  the  duke  in  a 


354 


NAPOLEON  BONAPARTE. 


neutral  territory,  he  became  answera- 
ble for  all  the  consequences  which  en- 
sued, and  that  he  had  the  double  mis- 
fortune to  incur  the  guilt  of  a  public 
crime,  and  at  the  same  time  to  commit 
a  political  error  of  the  greatest  magni- 
tude. 

The  conspiracies  intended  to  subvert 
the  power  of  Napoleon,  however,  serv- 
ed only  to  confirm  it ;  and  the  necessi- 
ty of  restoring  to  France  an  hereditary 
and  stable  government  had  now  become 
equally  obvious  and  urgent.    A  motion 
was  accordingly  made  and  carried  in  the 
Tribunate,  that   the  imperial  dignity 
should  be   conferred  upon  Napoleon; 
the  legislative  body  without  hesitation 
adopted  the  proposition ;  and  a  senatus- 
consultum  appeared,  in  which  he  was 
declared  Emperor  of  the  French,  with 
remainder  to  his  male  line,  or,  in  the 
event  of  his  having  no  children,  to  any 
son  or  grandson  of  his  brothers  whom  he 
might  choose  to  adopt  as  his  heir.   This 
decree  was  sent  down  to  the  depart- 
ments, and  on  the  1st  of  December, 
1804,  the  prefects  reported  that   be- 
tween three  and  four  millions  of  citi- 
zens had  subscribed  their  assent  to  the 
proposed  measure.     By  the  army  the 
elevation  of  Napoleon  was  hailed  with 
enthusiasm;  and  when  he  visited  the 
camp  at   Boulogne,   he   was  received 
with  an  excess  of  military  devotion. 
His  coronation  took  place  at  Paris  on 
the  2d  of  December,  amidst  all  that 
was  most  splendid  and  illustrious  in 
that  capital.     The  ceremony  was  per- 
formed in  the  cathedral  of  Notre-Dame, 
where  the  pope  officiated  on  the  occasion, 
and  consecrated  the  diadems,  which  Na- 
poleon placed  on  his  own  head,  and  on 
that   of  the   Empress   Josephine.     Ir 


like  manner,  on  the  25th  of  May,  1805, 
he  placed  on  his  head  the  iron  crowii 
of  the  Lombard  kings,  in  their  ancient 
capital,  and  henceforth  styled  himself 
Emperor  of  the  French  and  King  of 
Italy;  announcing,  however,  that  the 
two  crowns  should  not  be  held  by  the 
same  person  after  his  death. 

In  this  year,  Austria,  Russia,  and 
Sweden  formed  an  alliance  with  Eng- 
land against  France.  In  the  same 
year,  October  21st,  the  naval  power  of 
France  was  destroyed  by  the  battle  of 
Trafalgar.  But  on  the  other  hand,  in 
a  single  campaign,  which  was  concluded 
December  2d,  by  the  battle  of  Auster- 
litz,  Napoleon  overthrew  the  fabric  of 
the  German  empire,  and  obliged  the 
other  members  of  the  coalition  to  sep- 
arate from  England  and  sue  for  peace. 
He  then  associated  Bavaria,  Wurtem- 
berg,  the  Grand  Duchy  of  Berg,  and 
several  smaller  German  states,  under 
the  title  of  the  Confederation  of  the 
Rhine,  of  which  he  constituted  himself 
Protector,  receiving  in  return  the  ser- 
vices of  about  sixty  thousand  soldiers. 
Venice  was  added  to  the  kingdom  of 
Italy;  while  Joseph  and  Louis  Bona- 
parte were  appointed  respectively  kings 
of  Naples  and  Holland.  At  the  con- 
clusion of  this  war  Napoleon  created  a 
new  order  of  nobility ;  many  of  whom 
bore  foreign  titles,  and  received  ex- 
tended grants  in  the  territories  recent- 
ly conquered  by  France.  He  was 
now  surrounded  by  men  of  the  most 
opposite  character  and  principles,  yet 
all  so  well  chosen  for  aptitude  to  their 
several  offices  that  he  was  devotedly 
and  efficiently  served.  He  had  a  keen 
perception  of  talent  in  others,  and  judg 
ment  in  giving  it  a  suitable  direction 


NAPOLEON  BONAPABTE. 


355 


not  a  few  of  his  ablest  followers,  among 
them,  Lannes,  Junot,  Murat,  Victor, 
Augereau,  and  Soult,  were  of  humble 
origin.  Napoleon  usurped  the  entire 
control  of  the  civil  and  ecclesiastical 
polity,  and  by  means  of  compulsory 
laws  for  military  service,  and  the  sup- 
pression of  public  opinion  by  an  in- 
quisitorial police  and  an  enslaved 
press,  established  a  complete  despotism 
in  France. 

Prussia  had  been  induced  to  remain 
neutral  during  the  war  of  which  we 
have  just  spoken,  by  a  promise  of 
the  cession  of  Hanover.  Instead  of 
fulfilling  this  engagement,  Napoleon, 
by  a  series  of  injuries,  provoked  a  dec- 
laration of  war  in  1806.  Prussia  was 
subjugated  by  the  battle  of  Jena, 
fought  October  14th :  and  Napoleon 
then  marched  into  Poland  against  the 
Emperor  of  Russia ;  whom,  after  sev- 
eral battles,  at  Pultusk,  Preuss-Eylau, 
and  Friedland,  he  compelled  to  sue  for 
peace.  By  the  treaty  of  Tilsit,  Prussia 
was  dismembered,  her  sovereign  retain- 
ing but  a  scanty  portion  of  his  domin- 
ions. Jerome  Bonaparte  received  the 
kingdom  of  Westphalia,  which  was 
formed  from  the  Prussian  and  Hano- 
verian territories,  whilst  the  Prusso- 
Polish  provinces  were  formed  into  the 
Grand  Duchy  of  Warsaw,  and  bestow- 
ed on  Napoleon's  ally  the  Elector  of 
Saxony,  who  was  also  gratified  with 
the  title  of  king. 

The  want  of  a  navy  rendering  Na- 
poleon unable  to  contend  with  Eng- 
land, he  endeavored  to  separate  her  from 
the  European  world.  In  1806,  by  cer- 
tain decrees  issued  at  Berlin  and  Milan, 
and  acknowledged  at  the  Treaty  of  Til- 
sit by  every  continental  power,  Eng- 


land was  declared  in  a  state  of  block- 
ade, and  all  articles  of  English  growth 
and  manufacture  were  excluded  from 
their  ports.  But  as  the  rigid  enforce- 
ment of  these  decrees  was  prevented 
by  the  access  of  the  English  to  the 
Peninsula,  Napoleon  devised  a  scheme 
for  rendering  this  part  of  Europe  also 
amenable  to  his  authority.  In  1807,  a 
treaty  was  concluded  with  Spain ;  and, 
by  a  joint  invasion  of  the  Spanish  and 
French  forces,  Portugal  was  subdued 
and  the  House  of  Braganza  expelled. 
But  under  pretext  of  supporting  this 
invasion,  Napoleon  filled  the  most  im- 
portant military  stations  in  Spain  with 
his  own  troops.  The  royal  family  were 
enticed  into  France,  and  compelled  by 
threats  of  violence  to  renounce  all 
claims  to  their  hereditary  throne.  Jo- 
seph Bonaparte,  resigning  the  king- 
dom of  Naples  to  Murat,  repaired  to 
Madrid,  and  was  crowned  king  of 
Spain.  But  a  fierce  war  breaking  out  be- 
tween Joseph  and  his  new  subjects,  the 
French,  who  had  already  been  driven 
from  Portugal,by  Sir  Arthur  Wellesley, 
seemed  on  the  point  of  losing  the  whole 
Peninsula.  Napoleon,  in  a  campaign 
which  he  conducted  in  person,  re-es- 
tablished his  power  in  the  Peninsula ; 
but  a  declaration  of  war  by  Austria 
recalled  him  in  mid-conquest.  He 
hurried  to  the  German  frontier,  and 
after  beating  the  Austrians  at  Abens- 
berg,  Landshut,  and  Eckmuhl,  and 
taking  Vienna,  concluded  the  war  by 
the  battle  of  Wagram,  fought  July 
6th,  1809.  A  treaty  was  signed  at 
Schoenbrun  in  October,  by  which 
Austria  made  great  sacrifices  of  terri- 
tory and  population.  At  Schoenbrun 
Napoleon  narrowly  escaped  death  bj 


356 


NAPOLEON  BONAPARTE. 


the  hand  of  a  young  German  enthusiast, 
named  Stabbs.  During  this  war,  Kome 
was  annexed  to  France,  as  the  second 
city  of  the  empire ;  and  the  pope,  thus 
entirely  stripped  of  his  temporal  do- 
minions, was  soon  after  removed  to 
Fontainebleau,  where  he  was  confined 
as  a  prisoner. 

Desirous  of  an  heir  to  succeed  to  his 
vast  empire,  Napoleon,  on  his  return 
from  Schoenbrun,  divorced  his  empress, 
and,  in  accordance  with  one  of  the  ar- 
ticles of  the  late  treaty,  married  Maria 
Louisa,  daughter  of  the  Emperor  of  Aus- 
tria, in  March,  1810.  This  marriage  was 
followed,  in  1811,  by  the  birth  of  a  son, 
who  was  styled  King  of  Rome.  Al- 
th  >ugh  Napoleon  remained  in  Paris  in 
attendance  on  his  new  consort,  his  plans 
of  ambition  suffered  no  interruption. 
In  1810,  he  deposed  his  brother  Louis, 
who  thought  too  much  of  the  welfare 
of  his  own  subjects ;  and  annexed  Hol- 
land, together  with  the  Hanse  Towns 
and  the  whole  sea-coast  of  Germany, 
to  the  French  empire.  The  election  of 
the  French  Marshal  Bernadotte  to  the 
crown  of  Sweden  seemed  to  place  all 
Europe,  except  England,  Russia,  and 
the  Peninsula,  in  the  power  of  France. 
On  the  departure  of  Napoleon  from 
Spain,  in  1809,  England  again  attempt- 
ed to  deliver  the  Peninsula ;  and,  dur- 
ing the  two  succeeding  years,  Welling- 
ton did  much  towards  effecting  this 
object.  The  Emperor  of  Russia,  who, 
at  the  treaty  of  Tilsit,  was  supposed 
to  have  agreed  with  Napoleon  on  the 
division  of  the  European  world,  now 
found  the  power  of  the  latter  danger- 
ous to  his  own  kingdom,  which  also 
suffered  greatly  from  the  prohibition 
yf  commerce  with  England.  Napoleon, 


perceiving  that  his  brother  einperoi 
designed  to  avail  himself  of  the  revers- 
es in  the  Peninsula  to  insist  on  a  more 
liberal  .coiirse  of  policy,  and  security 
against  future  aggression,  determined 
on  war.  In  1812,  he  invaded  Russia, 
with  the  largest  army  that  had  ever 
been  assembled  under  one  European 
leader.  After  beating  the  Russians  at 
Smolensko  and  Borodino,  he  took  pos 
session  of  Moscow,  September  14th. 
But  the  approach  of  winter,  the  burn- 
ing of  the  city,  and  the  consequent 
want  of  food  and  shelter,  rendered  it 
impossible  to  remain  there;  and  the 
Czar  refusing  to  listen  to  proposals  for 
peace,  Napoleon,  after  five  weeks'  res- 
idence at  Moscow,  was  obliged  to  with- 
draw. In  the  celebrated  retreat  which 
followed,  the  French  army  was  utterly 
destroyed,  more  by  the  climate  than 
by  the  enemy ;  the  emperor  himself  es- 
caped with  difficulty. 

The  spirit  of  the  French  people  waa 
roused  by  this  disaster,  and  Napoleon 
speedily  found  himself  at  the  head  of 
another  vast  army.  But  Prussia  and 
Sweden  now  joined  the  league  against 
him,  and  experience  had  made  his  ene- 
mies more  fit  to  cope  with  him;  and 
though,  in  1813,  he  won  the  battles  of 
Lutzen  and  Bautzen  in  Saxony,  he  de- 
rived  no  material  advantage  from  them. 
Having  refused  to  accede  to  the  terms 
proposed  through  the  mediation  of 
Austria,  which  would  have  restricted 
France  to  her  ancient  power  and  boun- 
daries, this  state  also  took  part  with 
the  allies  against  him.  After  gaining 
the  battle  of  Dresden,  in  August,  Na- 
poleon was  compelled,  by  the  succes- 
sive defeat  of  four  of  his  marshals,  to 
abandon  his  position  on  the  Elbe,  and 


NAPOLEON  BONAPARTE. 


351 


retire  on  Leipsic.  In  October  was 
fought  the  great  battle  of  Leipsic, 
where,  in  three  days,  the  French  lost 
upwards  of  fifty  thousand  men.  The 
emperor  then  retreated  across  the  Rhine. 
The  Rhenish  Confederacy  was  forth  with 
dissolved,  and  the  pope  and  Ferdinand 
were  permitted  to  return  to  their  respec- 
tive dominions. 

Napoleon  having  thus  lost  all  his 
allies  and  foreign  possessions,  still  re- 
fused the  reasonable  terms  of  peace 
which  were  offered  to  him,  and  pre- 
pared to  defend  France  against  inva- 
sion. Wellington  crossed  the  Pyrenees 
in  1814,  and  about  the  same  time  the 
Russian  and  German  armies  passed 
the  Rhine.  During  this  campaign 
Napoleon  showed  wonderful  energy 
in  encountering  his  numerous  enemies, 
but  still  adhered,  with  obstinate  ar- 
rogance, to  what  he  considered  due 
to  his  own  personal  glory,  and  re- 
fused to  treat  for  peace.  After  losing 
the  battles  of  Brienne  and  La  Rothiere, 
in  February,  he  entered  on  a  negotia- 
tion with  the  allies ;  during  the  discus- 
sion of  which  he  attacked  and  defeated 
the  Prussians  on  the  Marne;  and,  on 
the  17th  and  18th,  with  a  perfect 
knowledge  that  his  minister  had  sign- 
ed the  preliminaries  of  peace,  he  as- 
saulted the  Austrians  and  defeated 
them  at  Nangis  and  Montereau.  These 
successes  were  useless,  and  only  served 
to  exasperate  his  foes.  In  March  he 
was  beaten  at  the  battles  of  Craonne 
and  Laon,  and  finding  the  allies  getting 
the  superiority,  he  skilfully  marched 
on  their  rear  with  the  view  of  inclos- 
ing them  between  his  own  army  and 
the  capital.  But  the  allies  obtained 
possession  of  Paris,  and  finding  the 


people  alienated  by  the  tyranny  of  the 
emperor,  declared  they  would  no  more 
treat  with  Napoleon  Bonaparte.  The 
weakened  state  of  his  army,  and  the 
defection  of  most  of  his  ministers  and 
generals,  left  him  without  resources. 
On  the  llth  of  April,  Napoleon  re- 
nounced, for  himself  and  his  heirs,  the 
thrones  of  France  and  Italy. 

The  allies  having  left  Napoleon  the 
choice  of  his  retreat,  he  chose  the 
island  of  Elba,  near  to  his  native  Cor- 
sica, and  set  out,  accompanied  by  four 
commissioners,  one  from  each  of  the 
great  allied  powers.  He  was  allowed 
to  retain  the  title  of  Emperor,  and  to 
take  along  with  him  a  small  number  of 
those  veteran  soldiers  who  had  accom- 
panied him  in  so  many  dangers  and 
whose  attachment  was  not  shaken 
by  his  misfortunes.  On  the  4th  of 
May  he  landed  in  Elba,  wherein,  be- 
ing separated  from  his  wife  and  son, 
and  without  any  projects  for  the 
future,  he  seemed  to  regard  himself 
as  politically  dead  to  Europe,  with  no 
other  task  remaining  for  him  to  per- 
form but  that  of  writing  the  history 
of  the  rise  and  fall  of  his  power. 

Napoleon  anxiously  watched  the 
progress  of  events,  which  outran  his 
expectations ;  he  was  also  well  inform- 
ed as  to  what  passed  at  the  congress  of 
Vienna;  and  having  learned  in  time 
that  the  ministers  of  Louis  XVIII.  had 
proposed  to  the  congress  to  remove 
him  from  Elba,  in  order  to  send  him 
in  exile  to  St.  Helena,  he  conceived  a 
project  which  circumstances  indicated 
as  the  only  reasonable  course  to  be 
followed.  He  resolved  to  return  to 
France. 

His  preparations  were  not  long;  he 


358 


.NAPOLEON  BONAPAKTE. 


brought  nothing  with  him  but  arms, 
and  trusted  that  France  would  pro- 
vide the  rest.  After  a  passage  of  five 
days,  he  landed  without  opposition  at 
Cannes,  near  the  spot  where,  fifteen 
years  before,  he  had  disembarked  on  his 
return  from  Egypt.  This  memorable 
event  took  place  on  the  1st  of  March, 
1815.  He  had  no  determinate  plan, 
because  he  wanted  particular  data  as 
to  the  state  of  affairs;  his  intention 
was  to  be  guided  by  events,  making 
provision  only  for  probable  contin- 
gencies. Nor  was  he  at  all  embar- 
rassed as  to  the  route  he  should  take ; 
for  he  required  a  point  of  support,  and 
as  Grenoble  was  the  nearest  fortress, 
le  lost  no  time  in  directing  his  march 
on  that  place,  which  opened  its  gates 
to  receive  him.  The  enthusiasm  of 
the  troops  knew  no  bounds,  and  the 
reception  which  he  .  everywhere  met 
with  confirmed  him  in  his  project.  In 
fact,  his  march  to  Paris  was  through- 
out a  triumphal  procession.  In  twenty 
days  this  new  revolution  was  termina- 
ted without  having  cost  a  single  drop 
of  blood.  Amidst  the  acclamations 
of  all  France,  Napoleon  was  reinstated 
on  the  throne.  The  grandeur  of  his 
enterprise  had  effaced  the  recollection 
of  his  misfortunes ;  it  had  restored  to 
him  the  confidence  of  the  French  peo- 
ple ;  and  he  was  once  more  the  man  of 
their  choice. 

In  a  proclamation  published  by  the 
Congress  of  Vienna  to  all  Europe,  it 
was  declared  that  Napoleon,  "  by  ap- 
pearing again  in  France,  had  deprived 
himself  of  the  protection  of  the  law, 
and  manifested  to  the  world  that  there 
could  neither  be  peace  nor  truce  with 
him.'  Nothing  remained,  therefore, 


but  to  commit  the  future  destiny  of 
Europe  to  the  arbitrament  of  arms. 
Various  attempts  were  made  to  open 
a  negotiation  with  the  allies,  but  all 
proved  abortive ;  and  as  Napoleon  had 
no  intention  to  await  the  onset  of  his 
enemies,  he  resolved  to  fall  upon  the 
Anglo-Prussians,  before  the  troops  of 
Austria  or  Russia  could  be  in  a  condi- 
tion to  take  part  in  the  conflict.  By 
the  end  of  May  he  had  about  180,- 
000  men  ready  to  take  the  field,  and  by 
the  middle  of  July  this  number  would 
have  been  increased  to  300,000;  but 
by  transporting  the  seat  of  war  into 
Belgium,  he  would  save  France  from 
invasion,  and  perhaps  take  the  ene- 
my unprepared.  These  considera- 
tions decided  him  to  become  the  as- 
sailant.  On  the  12th  of  June  he  set 
out  from  Paris,  and  on  the  14th  he  es 
tablished  his  head-quarters  at  Beau 
mont,  where,  in  order  to  profit  by  the 
dissemination  of  the  enemy,  he  judged 
it  necessary  to  open  the  campaign 
without  a  moment's  delay. 

Accordingly,  he  passed  the  frontier 
of  Belgium  on  the  15th,  and  on  the 
following  day  advanced  to  Fleurus, 
where  he  discovered  the  Prussian  army 
ranged  in  order  of  battle  between  St 
Amand  and  Sombref.  Ney  had  receiv 
ed  orders  to  push  forward  with  42,000 
men  by  the  Brussels  road  as  far  as 
Quatre  Bras,  an  important  point  sit- 
uated at  the  intersection  of  the  roads 
leading  to  Brussels,  Neville,  Charleroi, 
and  Namur,  and  there  to  keep  the 
English  in  check  and  prevent  them 
from  advancing  to  the  aid  of  the  Prus- 
sians, whom  Napoleon  proposed  to  at- 
tack with  the  72,000  men  that  remain 
ed  under  his  command.  The  battle  of 


NAPOLEON  BONAPARTE. 


359 


Ligny  followed,  in  which  the  Prussians 
were  defeated;  and  so  complete  was 
(;he  rout,  that,  of  70,000  men,  their 
generals  were  never  afterwards  able  to 
assemble  more  than  about  30,000.  A 
night  pursuit  would  have  annihilated 
them.  But  Ney  had  been  much  less 
fortunate  at  Quatre  Bras,  where  he 
displayed  great  infirmity,  neither  bring- 
ing his  whole  force  to  bear  on  the  Eng- 
lish, nor  throwing  himself  back  on  Bry 
to  act  on  the  rear  of  the  Prussians. 
The  Prussian  army  being  thus  defeat- 
ed, Grouchy  was  detached  in  pursuit 
of  it  with  35,000  men,  whilst  Napoleon 
proceeded  to  turn  his  efforts  against 
Wellington.  In  the  great  battle  of 
Waterloo,  the  fate  of  Bonaparte  was 
decided,  and  with  it  that  of  Europe. 
The  result,  more  fatal  to  France  than 
that  of  either  Agincourt  or  Poictiers, 
is  known  to  every  one.  By  the  time- 
ly arrival  of  the  Prussians,  who  had 
given  the  slip  to  Grouchy,  and  their 
junction  \vith  the  English,  the  French 
army  was  not  only  defeated,  but  total- 
ly dispersed. 

Napoleon  returned  to  Paris,  in  the 
hope  that  the  national  spirit  might  be 
roused,  and  that  all  good  Frenchmen 
would  unite  in  defending  their  coun- 
try against  another  foreign  invasion. 
But  he  soon  found  that  he  had  deceiv- 
ed himself.  Misfortune  had  deprived 
him  of  all  consideration ;  he  experienc- 
ed opposition  where  he  least  expected 
it ;  the  chambers  rose  in  a  state  of  in- 
surrection against  him ;  and,  in  a  short 


time,  he  was  compelled  to  sign  a  sec 
ond  abdication.  He  then  decided  to 
retire  to  America,  and  at  first  proposed 
to  embark  at  Bordeaux,  where  his 
brother  Joseph  had  hired  a  merchant- 
vessel  for  the  purpose.  But  he  after- 
wards changed  his  purpose,  and  set 
out  for  Rochefort,  where  he  arrived 
on  the  3d  of  July.  Finding  it  impos- 
sible, however,  to  put  to  sea,  and  near- 
ly equally  perilous  to  return  to  the  in- 
terior, he  took  the  resolution  of  throw- 
ing himself  upon  the  generosity  of  the 
prince  regent  of  England ;  and,  on  the 
15th,  embarked  on  board  of  the  Bel- 
lerophon,  in  Aix  Roads.  By  a  formal 
decision  of  the  English  government,  he 
was  sent  as  a  prisoner  of  war  to  St. 
Helena,  where  he  pined  away  in  hope- 
less exile,  until  death  put  an  end  to  his 
existence  on  the  3d  of  May,  1821.  In 
his  will  he  had  expressed  a  desire  that 
his  body  should  be  conveyed  to  France 
and  buried  on  the  banks  of  the  Seine; 
"  amongst  the  French  people  whom  he 
had  loved  so  well;"  but  this  request 
could  not,  it  seems,  be  complied  with 
until  1840,  when,  at  the  request  of  the 
government  of  Louis  Philippe,  Britain 
permitted  the  removal  of  his  remains 
to  France.  The  body  was  accordingly 
deposited  with  unparalleled  pomp  and 
display  in  the  Hotel  des  Invalides,  on 
the  15th  December,  1840.* 

*  Abridged  from  the  Encyclopedia  Britannica 
and  the  "Galleiy  of  Portraits"  of  the  Society 
for  the  Diffusior  of  Useful  Knowledge. 


rjlHIS  distinguished  mechanician 
JL  and  original  inventor  was  a  gen- 
uine product  of  the  American  soil. 
The  genius,  indeed,  of  the  men  whom 
America  produced  in  various  depart- 
ments of  science  in  the  last  century, 
the  Franklins,  the  Rittenhouses,  the 
Kinnersleys,  the  Whitneys,  should  be 
more  highly  estimated  than  the  paral- 
lel attainments  of  our  own  day.  At 
present  thousands  of  instructors  and 
thousands  of  new  influences  are  pav- 
ing the  way  to  fresh  inventions.  Com- 
mon schools  and  academies  furnish  the 
pupil  with  profound  elementary  knowl- 
edge ;  libraries  disclose  the  myriad 
achievements  of  the  past ;  special  news- 
papers and  magazines  carry  knowledge 
to  every  hamlet ;  kindred  sciences  wel- 
come and  assist  one  another ;  social  or- 
ganizations encourage  new  discovery ; 
government  offers  its  prizes ;  accumu- 
lated commercial  and  manufacturing 
wealth  rewards  the  inventor  on  the 
instant.  How  different  this  splendid 
triumphal  procession,  from  the  first  ele- 
ments of  science  to  fame  and  fortune, 
from  the  groping  into  light  of  the  hea- 
ven-sown genius  in  the  infant  society 
of  America  a  hundred  years  ago  !  It 
must  needs  have  been  a  plant  of  no 

(360) 


common  hardihood,  fully  predestined 
to  growth  and  vitality,  which  could 
then  penetrate  the  crust  of  the  world 
in  our  western  wilderness. 

It  has  been  remarked  as  a  notewor- 
thy coincidence,  that  Benjamin  West 
and  Robert  Fulton  came  into  the  world 
in  the  same  vicinity,  in  what  was,  at 
the  time  of  their  birth,  a  wild  and  un- 
cultivated portion  of  the  country,  more 
remote  from  the  seaboard  in  means  of 
access  and  culture,  than  Arkansas  is 
at  present.  It  is  owing  to  one  of  these 
men  that  the  distance  has  been  dimin- 
ished, and  that  we  are  enabled  to  make 
this  truthful  comparison.  West  was 
born  at  Springfield,  Pa.,  in  1738.  Rob- 
ert Fulton  first  saw  the  light  in  a  town- 
ship  of  Lancaster  County,  Pa.,  then 
called  Little  Britain,  but  now  bearing 
the  name  of  Fulton,  in  the  year  1765. 
His  father,  of  the  same  name,  was  an 
emigrant  from  Ireland.  He  was  at 
one  time,  we  are  told,  a  tailor,  but  at 
his  son's  birth  was  the  occupant  of  a 
farm.  He  died  too  early  to  influence 
the  child's  education,  which  was  pick- 
ed up  mainly  by  himself,  though  we 
hear  of  his  being  at  school,  and,  as  is 
not  uncommon  with  boys  of  geni  us,  of 
being  accounted  a  dull  fellow.  This 


362 


EGBERT  FULTON. 


lection  of  the  steward,  a  man  of  conse- 
quence on  such  estates.  It  was  while 
he  was  in  the  neighborhood  of  Exeter 
that  he  made  the  acquaintance  of  the 
Earl  of  Bridgewater,  the  famous  parent 
of  the  canal  system  in  England.  By 
his  advice  and  example  and  the  kin- 
dred encouragement  of  Lord  Stanhope, 
with  whom  he  was  intimate,  it  would 
appear  that  Fulton  was  led  to  adopt 
the  profession  of  a  civil  engineer,  in 
which,  and  not  as  a  painter,  he  was 
destined  to  become  so  well  known  to 
the  world. 

At  this  time,  in  1793,  he  addressed 
a  letter  to  Lord  Stanhope  on  the  sub- 
ject of  some  experiments  in  the  appli- 
cation of  steam  to  navigation,  contain- 
ing the  views  .which  he  afterwards 
put  in  practice  on  the  Hudson,  and 
which,  if  heeded  by  the  noble  earl, 
"  the  important  invention  of  a  success- 
ful steamboat,"  says  Professor  Ren- 
wick,  "  might  have  been  given  to  the 
world  ten  years  earlier  than  its  actual 
introduction." 

Fulton  now  took  up  his  residence  at 
Birmingham,  then  illuminated  by  the 
genius  of  James  Watt,  to  whom  he 
was  naturally  attracted,  and  with 
whose  labors  on  the  steam-engine  he 
became  acquainted.  He  employed 
himself  particularly  in  the  study  of 
canals,  and  took  out  a  patent  for  a 
double-inclined  plane  of  his  invention 
for  measuring  inequalities  of  height, 
the  principle  of  which  was  exhibited 
in  the  treatise  on  the  improvement  of 
canal  navigation  which  he  published 
in  London  in  1796,  with  numerous 
well-executed  plates  from  designs  by 
his  own  hand.  A  copy  of  this  work 
was  sent  by  the  author  to  President 


Washington,  with  the  intention  of 
bringing  its  theories  into  practical  use 
in  America.  Another  was  forwarded 
with  a  letter  to  Governor  Mifflin,  of 
Pennsylvania,  urging,  with  numerous 
calculations,  the  introduction  of  a 
canal  system  into  that  State,  "as  a 
great  national  question." 

Fulton  also  patented  in  England  a 
mill  for  sawing  marble,  for  which  he 
received  the  thanks  of  the  British  So 
ciety  for  the  Promotion  of  Arts  and 
Commerce,  and  an  honorary  medal; 
also  machines  for  spinning  flax,  mak- 
ing ropes,  and  an  earth-excavator  for 
digging  canals. 

In  1797,  he  passed  over  to  Paris, 
with,  the  design  of  bringing  to  the  no- 
tice of  the  French  Government  his  in- 
vention of  the  torpedo,  a  device  for  the 
blowing  up  of  enemies'  vessels  by  at- 
taching beneath  the  water  a  copper 
canister  of  gunpowder,  to  be  dis- 
charged by  a  gunlock  and  clockwork. 
He  found  his  ingenious  countryman, 
Joel  Barlow,  in  the  French  capital,  a 
kindred  spirit  with  whom  he  formed 
an  acquaintance,  which,  as  in  the  case 
of  West,  was  intimately  continued  for 
years  under  the  same  roof.  Fulton 
availed  himself  of  this  opportunity  to 
study  the  French  and  German  and 
Italian  languages,  and  improve  his  ac- 
quaintance with  the  higher  branches 
of  mechanical  science.  Among  other 
employments,  he  projected,  it  is  said, 
two  buildings  for  the  exhibition  of 
panoramas,  the  success  of  which  owed 
much  to  his  assistance.  On  the  arrival 
of  Chancellor  Livingston  in  France,  in 
1801,  as  minister,  he  found  a  ready  as- 
sistant in  Fulton  to  the  schemes  of 
steam  navigation  in  which  he  had  been 


EGBERT  FULTON. 


363 


already  engaged  on  the  Hudson.  Ex- 
periments were  set  on  foot  in  the  two 
following  years  which  resulted  in  suffi- 
cient success  in  the  movement  of  a 
boat  of  considerable  size,  propelled  by 
steam  on  the  Seine,  to  justify  the  pro- 
secution of  the  work  in  America.  An 
engine  of  a  peculiar  construction,  plan- 
ned by  Fulton,  was  ordered  in  Eng- 
land from  Watt  and  Bolton  at  Bir- 
mingham. The  preparation  of  this 
machinery  was  in  part  superintended 
by  Fulton  himself. 

He  had  not,  it  would  seem,  relin- 
quished his  favorite  schemes  of  tor- 
pedo warfare,  and  finding  little  en- 
couragement or  success  in  his  opera- 
tions at  Brest,  under  the  auspices  of 
Napoleon,  entered  into  a  negotiation, 
at  the  instance  of  Earl  Stanhope,  who 
thought  the  thing  of  importance,  with 
the  English  Government.  This,  how- 
ever, also  proved  fruitless.  The  steam- 
engine  was  completed  and  sent  to  New 
York  in  1806.  In  Decen'  ber  of  the 
same  year  Fulton  arrived  in  that  city, 
and  immediately  directed  his  attention 
to  his  favorite  projects.  He  enlisted 
the  Government  in  his  scheme  of  "  tor- 
pedo warfare,"  which  he  brought  to 
the  attention  of  the  citizens  in  a  lec- 
ture before  the  magistrates  and  a  few 
invited  persons  on  Governor's  Island, 
and  a  notable  experiment  in  the  har- 
bor in  July,  1807,  when  an  old  brig 
was  exploded  by  one  of  his  heavily 
charged  canisters.  A  pleasant  account 
of  the  excitement  into  which  the  town 
was  thrown  by  these  experiments  may 
be  read  in  one  of  the  numbers  of  Wash- 
ington Irving's  "  Salmagundi,"  in  which 
Will  Wizard  undertakes  to  give  an  ac- 
count of  the  affair.  The  pretensions  of 


"  The  North  Kiver  Society,"  which  it 
was  alleged  was  intended  to  set  that 
river  on  fire,  were  a  frequent  subject 
of  merriment  with  the  young  wags  of 
this  merry  periodical,  and  Fulton's  pro- 
ject seemed  to  bring  the  thing  to  a 
head.  "The  society  have,  it  seems," 
says  the  number  for  July,  1807,  "in- 
vented a  cunning  machine,  shrewdly 
yclept  a  Torpedo  /  by  which  the  stout- 
est line-of-battle  ship,  even  a  Santissi- 
ma  Trinidad  may  be  caught  napping 
and  decomposed  in  a  twinkling ;  a  kind 
of  submarine  powder  magazine  to  swim 
under  water,  like  an  aquatic  mole  or 
water  rat,  and  destroy  the  enemy  in 
the  moments  of  unsuspicious  security." 
We  shall  presently  see  Fulton  return 
ing  to  these  inventions. 

In  the  mean  time  he  was  proceeding 
with  the  construction  of  the  steamboat, 
which  was  to  be  a  greater  marvel  to 
the  quidnuncs  of  the  town  than  the 
torpedo  itself.  By  a  privilege  already 
granted  by  the  Legislature  of  the  State, 
the  exclusive  right  of  navigating  its 
waters  was  reserved  to  himself  and 
Livingston.  To  supply  funds  for  the 
completion  of  his  vessel,  he  offered 
one-third  of  his  patent  right  for  sale ; 
but  no  one  was  found  with  faith 
enough  in  the  enterprise  to  induce  him 
to  come  forward  as  the  purchaser.  The 
boat  was,  however,  at  last  launched  on 
the  East  Kiver,  and,  contrary  to  the 
public  expectation,  was  actually  moved 
by  her  machinery  to  her  station  on  the 
Hudson* 

The  Clermont — the  boat  was  thus 
named  from  the  seat  of  Chancellor  Liv- 
ingston on  the  Hudson — was  next  ad« 
vertised  to  sail  for  Albany;  and  ac- 
cordingly took  her  departure  on  Mon 


364 


EOBEET  FULTON. 


day  afternoon,  September  14th,  1807, 
from  a  dock  in  the  upper  part  of  the 
city  on  the  North  Kiver.  In  thirty- 
two  hours  she  made  her  destination,  a 
distance  of  one  hundred  and  fifty  miles. 
On  her  return  to  New  York,  a  few  days 
after,  the  voyage  was  made  in  thirty 
hours.  A  passage  from  the  letter  of 
Fulton  to  his  friend,  Joel  Barlow,  af- 
fords an  interesting  memorial  of  the 
occasion.  After  stating  that  the  voy- 
age had  turned  out  rather  more  favor- 
ably than  he  had  calculated,  and  re- 
marking that,  with  a  light  breeze 
against  him,  he  had,  solely  by  the  aid 
of  the  engine, "  overtaken  many  sloops 
and  schooners  beating  to  windward, 
and  parted  with  them  as  if  they  had 
been  at  anchor,"  he  adds,  "  The  power 
of  propelling  boats  by  steam  is  now 
fully  proved.  The  morning  I  left  New 
York,  there  were  not  perhaps  thirty 
persons  in  the  city  who  believed  that 
the  boat  would  ever  move  one  mile  an 
hour,  or  be  of  the  least  utility ;  and 
pdiile  we  were  putting  off  from  the 
wharf,  which  was  crowded  with  spec- 
tators, I  heard  a  number  of  sarcastic 
remarks.  This  is  the  way  in  which 
ignorant  men  compliment  what  they 
call  philosophers  and  projectors.  Hav- 
ing employed  much  time,  money  and 
zeal  in  accomplishing  this  work,  it 
gives  me,  as  it  will  you,  great  pleasure 
to  see  it  fully  answer  my  expectations. 
It  will  give  a  cheap  and  quick  convey- 
ance to  the  merchandise  on  the  Missis- 
sippi, Missouri  and  other  great  rivers, 
which  are  now  laying  open  their  treas- 
ures to  the  enterprise  of  our  country- 
men; and  although  the  prospect  of 
personal  emolument  has  been  some  in- 
ducement to  me,  I  feel  infinitely  more 


pleasure  in  reflecting  on  the  immense 
advantage  my  country  will  derive  from 
the  invention." 

"We  find  Fulton  thus  alluding  to  the 
navigation  of  the  Mississippi.  It  was 
the  original  intention  in  the  model  of 
the  Clermont,  which  was  especially 
adapted  for  shallow  waters.  Indeed, 
up  to  this  time,  as  remarked  by  Pro- 
fessor Renwick,  "  although  the  exclu- 
sive grant  had  been  sought  and  ob- 
tained from  the  State  of  New  York,  it 
does  not  appear  that  either  Fulton  or 
his  associate  had  been  fully  aware  of 
the  vast  opening  which  the  navigation 
of  the  Hudson  presented  for  the  use 
of  steam."  The  demand  for  trave] 
soon  outran  the  narrow  accommoda- 
tions of  the  Clermont,  now  put  upon 
her  regular  trips  upon  the  river ;  an- 
other vessel  was  built,  larger  and  of 
finer  appointments;  punctuality  was 
established,  and  the  brilliant  steam- 
boat service  of  the  Hudson  fairly  com 
menced. 

After  a  review  of  the  pretensions  of 
all  claimants,  the  honor  appears  fairly 
due  to  Fulton,  of  the  first  practical 
application  of  steam,  worthy  the  men- 
tion, to  navigation.  There  had  indeed 
been  earlier  attempts,  both  in  this 
country  and  abroad ;  but,  as  shown  in 
the  concise  yet  comprehensive  sum- 
mary of  Professor  Renwick,  they  could 
be  of  but  little  importance  before 
James  Watt,  in  1786,  completed  the 
structure  of  the  double-acting  conden- 
sing engine.  After  this  invention  be- 
came known,  the  chief  rival  claimant 
is  Patrick  Miller,  of  Dalswinton,  who 
does  appear  to  have  thought  seriously 
of  the  thing  in  1787,  and  employed 
the  engineer  Symington  to  complete  a 


EGBERT  FULTON. 


365 


model  for  Mm  in  1791.  "If  we  may 
credit  the  evidence  which  has  been  ad- 
duced," says  Ren  wick,  "  the  experi- 
ment was  as  successful  as  the  first  at- 
tempts of  Fulton ;  but  it  did  not  give 
to  the  inventor  that  degree  of  confi- 
dence which  was  necessary  to  induce 
him  to  embark  his  fortune  in  the  en- 
terprise." Symington's  subsequent  at- 
tempt, in  1801,  was  but  a  renewal  of 
the  idea  and  plan  of  Miller.  Fulton's 
first  letter  on  the  subject,  to  Earl  Stan- 
hope, it  will  be  remembered,  was  in 
1793,  and  his  practical  experiments  in 
France  began  in  1802.  In  the  history 
of  inventions,  it  is  not  uncommon  to 
find  in  this  way  claimants  starting  up 
after  the  fact  is  established;  men  of 
half  ideas  and  immature  efforts;  in- 
telligent dreamers,  perhaps,  but  want- 
ing confidence  or  ability  to  put  their 
visions  into  act.  It  is  emphatically 
the  man  who  accomplishes,  who  makes 
a  living  reality  of  the  immature  pro- 
ject, who  is  entitled  to  the  credit.  The 
world  thus  pays  a  respect  to  Franklin 
for  his  discoveries  in  electricity,  which 
he  would  never  have  gained  had  he 
not  demonstrated  their  truth  by  draw- 
ing down  the  lightning  from  heaven. 
Potentially,  the  steamboat  of  Fulton 
lay  in  the  steam-engine  of  Watt.  Prac- 
tically, it  did  not  exist  before  the 
American  inventor .  directed  the  Cler- 
mont  along  the  waters  of  the  Hudson, 
"  a  thing  of  life."  His  successive  adapt- 
ations and  improvements  in  the  appli- 
cation of  the  steam-engine  to  naviga- 
tion are  freely  admitted,  even  by  those 
who  dispute  the  honor  of  the  first  in- 
vention. 

We  may  here  pause  with  Professor 
Hen  wick,  the  biographer  of  Fulton,  to 


dwell  for  a  moment  upon  this  period 
of  success,  consecrated  to  felicity  in 
the  marriage  of  the  triumphant  in- 
ventor with  the  niece  of  his  friend  and 
partner  Chancellor  Livingston.  Miss 
Harriet  Livingston  was  the  ornament 
of  the  society  of  which  her  eminent 
uncle  was  the  head.  "Preeminent," 
we  are  told,  "  in  beauty,  grace  and  ac- 
complishments, she  speedily  attracted 
the  ardent  admiration  of  Fulton ;  and 
this  was  returned  by  an  estimate  of 
his  talent  and  genius,  amounting  al- 
most to  enthusiasm.  The  epoch  of 
their  nuptials,  the  spring  of  1808,  was 
that  of  Fulton's  greatest  glory.  Every- 
thing, in  fact,  appeared  to  concur  in 
enhancing  the  advantages  of  his  posi- 
tion. Leaving  out  of  view  all  ques- 
tions of  romance,  his  bride  was  such  as 
the  most  impartial  judgment  would 
have  selected;  young,  lovely,  highly 
educated,  intelligent,  possessed  of  what, 
in  those  days,  was  accounted  wealth. 
His  long  labors  in  adapting  the  steam- 
engine  to  the  purposes  of  navigation, 
had  been  followed  by  complete  suc- 
cess ;  and  that  very  success  had  opened 
to  him,  through  the  exclusive  grant  of 
the  navigation  of  the  Hudson,  the 
prospect  of  vast  riches.  Esteemed  and 
honored,  even  by  those  who  had  been 
most  incredulous  while  his  scheme  was 
in  embryo,  he  felt  himself  placed  on 
the  highest  step  of  the  social  scale." 

Then  followed  what  may  be  called 
the  reaction — the  test  to  which  every 
species  of  prosperity  is  in  some  way 
exposed.  The  most  ordinary  acquisi 
tion  of  wealth  requires  the  exercise  of 
new  arts  and  ability  to  retain  it.  Much 
more  is  the  successful  inventor  trncked 
by  a  new  swarm  of  opponents.  The 


366 


KOBEET  FULTON. 


very  men,  perhaps,  who  laughed  at  his 
folly  before  his  invention  was  com- 
pleted, may  assist  in  robbing  him  of 
its  results.  Success,  too,  is  sometimes 
expensive.  It  requires  constantly  new 
outlay  to  meet  its  own  vociferous  de- 
mands. What  with  the  rapid  increase 
of  travel,  the  consequent  enlarged  ex- 
penditure, the  necessary  dependence 
upon  stewards,  and  above  all  the  legal 
attacks  upon  his  patent,  Fulton  may 
have  felt  with  Frankenstein,  that  his 
mechanism  had  given  birth  and  powers 
to  a  monster,  destined  to  vex  and  crush 
him  in  its  embrace.  Instead  of  reap- 
ing the  rewards  of  the  invention,  he 
was  entangled  in  a  business  enterprise 
of  a  costly  character,  beset  with  legal 
difficulties.  The  exclusive  navigation 
of  the  waters  of  New  York  was  too 
wide  a  privilege  to  be  given  by  the 
Legislature  of  a  single  State ;  so  that 
the  discussion  of  the  grant  became  a 
grave  political  question. 

This  conflict  of  laws  was  especially 
disastrous  to  Fulton,  in  the  difficulties 
which  arose  in  New  York  and  New 
Jersey  in  respect  to  the  ferry,  at  the 
city,  between  the  opposite  shores,  from 
which  he  expected  a  considerable  rev- 
enue. 

Having  now  seen  Fulton  place  steam- 
boat navigation  on  a  permanent  foot- 
ing on  the  Hudson,  we  may  return  to 
his  favorite  studies  of  the  arts  of  mili- 
tary warfare,  in  the  destruction  of  ene- 
mies' ships  afloat.  We  find  him  follow- 
ing up  the  successful  exhibition  of  the 
'torpedo'  off  the  Battery,  by  fresh 
appeals  to  Government,  seconded  by 
the  social  influence  of  his  friend,  Joel 
Barlow,  who  had  now  established  him- 
self at  his  seat,  Kalorama,  at  Washing- 


ton. A  work  was  published  by  Ful 
ton,  fully  describing  his  proceedings, 
entitled,  "Torpedo-war;  or,  Submarine 
Explosions" — with  the  motto, The  Lib- 
erty of  the  Seas  will  be  the  Happiness  of 
the  Earth.  An  appropriation  was  made 
by  Congress,  and  new  experiments  or- 
dered at  New  York,  before  a  board  of 
observation,  in  1810.  Commodore  Rod 
gers  was  at  the  head  of  the  commission. 
Extraordinary  precautions  were  taken 
to  defend  the  vessel  exposed  to  attack 
which  had  the  effect  of  baffling  the 
inventor's  efforts,  while  they  proved 
the  formidable  nature  of  the  assailant 
which  they  were  intended  to  guard 
against.  Old  naval  officers  are  chary 
of  new  inventions,  and,  it  was  thought 
by  some,  hardly  showed  Fulton's  con- 
trivances fair  play.  The  report  to  the 
Government  was  a  mutilated  affair, 
which,  if  it  did  not  censure,  found  lit- 
tle to  commend.  The  invention,  how- 
ever, was  not  lost  sight  of  when  a 
period  of  actual  warfare  called  such 
defences  into  requisition.  His  devices 
seem  to  have  had  the  effect,  at  least, 
of  infusing  a  wholesome  dread  into  the 
minds  of  British  officers,  cruising  about 
the  waters  in  the  vicinity  of  New  York. 
An  incident  related  of  Fulton,  about 
this  time,  by  his  earliest  biographer, 
Cadwalader  D.  Colden,  may  be  narra- 
ted as  an  amusing  exhibition  of  a  not 
uncommon  popular  absurdity.  An 
unscrupulous,  scientific  quack,  named 
Redheffer,  had  deluded  the  Philadel 
phians  into  the  belief  of  his  discover- 
ing  a  species  of  perpetual  motion.  He 
succeeded  in  a  thorough  mystification, 
it  is  said,  of  some  very  clever  people, 
whose  brains  were  entangled  in  hia 
wheels  and  weights;  for  there  is,  at 


EGBERT  FULTON. 


367 


times,  no  more  credulous  person  than 
your  man  of  science,  who  spins  a  web 
for  his  own  imprisonment.  Ingenious 
theories  were  not  wanting  to  account 
for  the  prodigious  working  of  the  ma- 
chine. Some  recondite  speculations, 
well-fortified  with  figures,  will  be 
found  in  the  old  "  Port  Folio."  The 
apparatus  was  brought  to  New  York, 
and  set  up  to  the  admiration  of  the 
gaping  crowd,  who  dropped  their  dol- 
lar at  the  door  into  the  pockets  of  the 
showman,  capacious  as  their  own  cre- 
dulity. Fulton  was,  at  length,  induced 
to  join  the  crowd.  The  machine  was 
in  an  isolated  house  in  the  suburbs  of 
the  city.  Fulton  had  hardly  entered, 
when  his  practiced  ear  detected  an  ir- 
regular crank  motion.  The  whole 
secret  was  betrayed  to  him  in  this 
whisper.  Presently  entering  into  con- 
versation with  the  showman,  he  de- 
nounced the  whole  thing  as  an  impo- 
sition; the  usual  amount  of  virtuous 
indignation  was  expended  by  the  ex- 
hibitor; the  visitors  became  excited; 
Fulton  was  resolute.  He  proposed  an 
inspection  behind  the  scenes,  promis- 
ing to  make  good  any  damage  in  the 
process.  A  few  thin  strips  of  lath 
were  plucked  away,  apparently  used 
only  to  steady  the  machinery,  which 
betrayed  a  string  of  catgut,  connecting 
the  work  with  something  beyond.  Fol- 
lowing this  clue  through  an  upper 
room,  there  was  found,  at  its  termina- 
tion, the  secret  of  the  wondrous  effect, 
in  "  a  poor,  old  man,  with  an  immense 
beard,  and  all  the  appearances  of  hav- 


ing suffered  a  long  imprisonment,  seat- 
ed on  a  stool,  quite  unconscious  of 
what  had  happened  below,  with  one 
hand  gnawing  a  crust,  and  with  the 
other  turning  a  crank."*  The  mob 
demolished  the  machine,  and  Redhef- 
fer  disappeared  with  his  vaporous  de- 
lusion. 

In  these  later  years  of  his  life,  for 
unhappily  he  was  now  approaching  its 
close,  Fulton  was  mainly  employed  at 
New  York,  in  building  and  equipping, 
under  the  supervision  of  Government, 
his  famous  cannon-proof  steam-frigate, 
named  after  him,  The  Fulton,  and  in 
perfecting  his  favorite  devices  of  sub- 
marine sailing  vessels,  in  connection 
with  the  torpedo  warfare.  The  steam- 
frigate  was  launched  in  October,  1814, 
but  its  projector  did  not  live  to  wit- 
ness its  completion.  He  may  be  said, 
indeed,  to  have  been  a  martyr  to  the 
undertaking.  His  constitution,  not  of 
the  strongest,  was  exposed  to  a  severe 
test  in  mid- winter,  in  January,  1815, 
in  a  passage  across  the  Hudson,  amidst 
the  ice  in  an  open  boat.  He  was  re- 
turning from  the  Legislature  of  New 
Jersey,  at  Trenton,  whither  he  had 
gone  to  give  evidence  in  the  protract- 
ed steamboat  controversy.  He  was 
taken  ill  on  his  return  home,  and  be- 
fore he  was  fully  restored,  ventured 
out  to  superintend  some  work  on  the 
exposed  deck  of  the  Fulton.  This 
brought  on  increased  illness,  which 
speedily  terminated  in  death,  Febru 

ary  24th,  1815. 

*  Colden's  Life  of  Fulton,  p.  219. 


MADAME    DE    STAEL. 


ANNE-MARIE  LOUISE  NECK- 
ER  was  born  at  Paris  in  1766. 
Both  her  parents  were  remarkable  per- 
sons. Her  father,  James  Necker,  a 
simple  citizen  of  Geneva,  began  life  as 
clerk  in  a  banker's  office  in  Paris, 
speedily  became  a  partner,  and  by 
skill,  diligence,  sound  judgment,  and 
strict  integrity,  contrived  in  the  course 
of  twenty  years  to  amass  a  large  for- 
tune and  to  acquire  a  lofty  reputation. 
While  accumulating  wealth,  however, 
he  neglected  neither  literature  nor  so- 
ciety. He  studied  both  philosophy  and 
political  economy ;  he  associated  with 
the  Encyclopedists  and  eminent  literati 
of  the  time ;  his  house  was  frequented 
by  some  of  the  most  remarkable  men 
who  at  that  period  made  the  Parisian 
salons  the  most  brilliant  in  Europe; 
and  he  found  time,  by  various  writings 
on  financial  matters,  to  create  a  high 
and  general  estimation  of  his  talents  as 
an  administrator  and  economist.  His 
management  of  the  affairs  of  the  French 
East  India  Company  raised  his  fame  in 
the  highest  political  circles,  while,  as 
accredited  agent  for  the  Republic  of 
Geneva  at  the  court  of  Versailles,  he 
obtained  the  esteem  and  confidence 
both  of  the  sovereign  and  the  minis- 

(368) 


ters.  So  high  did  he  stand  both  in 
popular  and  courtly  estimation,  that, 
shortly  after  the  accession  of  Louis 
XVI.,  he  was  appointed,  although  a 
foreigner,  Comptroller-General  of  the 
Finances.  He  held  this  post  for  five 
years,  till  1781 ;  and  contrived  not 
only  to  effect  considerable  savings,  by 
the  suppression  of  upwards  of  six  hun- 
dred sinecures,  but  also  in  some  small 
degree  to  mitigate  and  equalize  taxa- 
tion, and  to  introduce  a  system  of  or- 
der and  regularity  into  the  public  ac- 
counts to  which  they  had  long  been 
strangers.  As  proved  by  his  celebrated 
Compte  rendu,  which,  though  vehe- 
mently attacked,  was  never  success- 
fully impugned,  he  found  a  deficit  of 
thirty-four  millions  when  he  entered 
office,  and  left  a  surplus  of  ten  millions 
when  he  quitted  it, — notwithstanding 
the  heavy  expenses  of  the  American 
war.  In  the  course  of  his  administra- 
tion, however,  Necker  had  of  course 
made  many  enemies,  who  busied  them- 
selves in  undermining  his  position  at 
court,  and  overruled  the  weak  and 
vacillating  attachment  of  the  king. 
Necker  found  that  his  most  careful 
and  valuable  plans  were  canvassed  and 
spoiled  by  his  enemies  in  the  council 


370 


MADAME  DE   STAEL. 


been  far  better  for  his  own  fame  and 
happiness  if  he  had  not  returned  to 
power:  it  could  scarcely  have  been 
worse  for  his  adopted  country.  His 
third  and  last  administration  was  a 
series  of  melancholy  and  perhaps  ine- 
vitable failures.  The  torrent  of  popu- 
lar violence  had  become  far  too  strong 
to  stem.  The  monarchy  had  fallen  to 
a  position  in  which  it  was  impossible 
to  save  it.  Necker's  head,  too,  seems 
to  have  been  somewhat  turned  by  his 
triumph.  lie  disappointed  the  people 
and  bored  the  Assembly.  The  stream 
of  events  had  swept  past  him,  and  left 
him  standing  bewildered  and  breath- 
less on  the  margin. 

Disheartened,  in  despair  of  the  for- 
tunes of  France,  he  retired  to  his  resi- 
dence at  Coppet,  in  Switzerland,  where 
Gibbon,  who  saw  much  of  him  at  this 
period  of  his  career,  says  that  he  should 
have  liked  to  shew  him  in  his  then  con- 
dition to  any  one  whom  he  desired  to 
cure  of  the  sin  of  ambition.  By  de- 
grees, however,  this  depression  left 
him,  and  he  roused  himself  again  to 
interest  and  action.  He  sent  forth 
pamphlet  after  pamphlet  of  warning 
and  remonstrance  to  hostile  readers 
and  unheeding  ears.  He  offered  him- 
self to  Louis  as  his  advocate  when  that 
monarch  was  brought  to  trial,  and, 
when  his  offer  was  declined,  published 
a  generous  and  warm  defence  of  his 
old  master.  The  remainder  of  his  life 
was  passed  in  the  enjoyment  of  family 
affection,  of  literary  labors,  and  of  phi- 
losophical and  religious  speculations ; 
and  he  died  in  1804,  at  the  age  of  sev- 
enty-two, happy  in  the  conviction  that 
he  was  on]y  exchanging  the  society  of 
his  cherished  daughter  for  that  of  his 


faithful  and  long-respected  wife,  who 
had  died  some  years  before. 

Madame  Necker,  too,  was,  in  her  way 
remarkable  enough.  The- daughter  oi 
a  Swiss  Protestant  minister  of  high  re- 
pute for  piety  and  talent,  and  herself 
early  distinguished  both  for  beauty  and 
accomplishments,  her  spotless  character 
and  superior  intellectual  powers  at- 
tracted the  admiration  of  Gibbon  dur- 
ing his  early  residence  at  Lausanne. 
He  proposed  and  was  accepted;  but 
his  father  imagining  that  his  son  might 
well  aspire  to  some  higher  connection, 
was  very  indignant,  and  forbade  the 
fulfilment  of  the  engagement.  Gibbon 
submitted  and  moralized:  "I  sighed 
as  a  lover  (says  he),  and  obeyed  as  a 
son,  and  Mademoiselle  Curchod  is  now 
the  wife  of  the  favored  minister  of  a 
great  kingdom,  and  sits  in  the  high 
places  of  the  earth."  They  renewed 
their  acquaintance  in  after  years,  and 
remained  fast  friends  till  death. 

How  such  a  child  as  Mademoiselle 
Necker  came  to  spring  from  two  pa- 
rents who  resembled  her  so  little,  were 
a  vain  conjecture.  She  was  from  the 
first  the  very  incarnation  of  genius 
and  of  impulse.  Her  precocity  was 
extraordinary,  and  her  vivacity  and 
vehemence  both  of  intellect  and  tem- 
perament baffled  all  her  mother's  efforts 
at  regulation  and  control.  Her  power 
of  acquisition  and  mental  assimilation 
were  immense.  At  twelve  years  of 
age  she  wrote  a  drama  of  social  life, 
which  was  acted  by  herself  and  her 
young  companions.  Her  remarkable 
talent  for  conversation,  and  for  under- 
standing the  conversation  of  others, 
even  at  that  early  period,  attracted  the 
attention  and  excited  the  affectionate 


MADAME  DE  STAEL. 


interest  of  many  of  the  celebrated  men 
who  frequented  her  father's  salon; 
and  in  spite  of  Madame  Necker's  dis- 
approving looks,  they  used  to  gather 
round  her,  listening  to  her  sallies,  and 
provoking  her  love  of  argument  and 
repartee.  "  We  entered  the  drawing- 
room,"  writes  Mdlle.  Huber.  "By 
the  side  of  Madame  Necker's  arm-chair 
was  a  little  wooden  stool  on  which  her 
daughter  was  expected  to  sit,  and  to 
keep  herself  very  upright.  Hardly 
had  she  taken  her  accustomed  place, 
when  three  or  four  old  people  came 
round  her,  and  spoke  to  her  with  the 
deepest  interest.  One  of  them,  who 
wore  a  little  round  wig,  took  her  hands 
in  his,  where  he  kept  them  a  long 
time,  talking  to  her  all  the  while,  as  if 
she  had  been  five-and-twenty  years 
old.  This  was  the  Abbe  Eaynal ;  the 
others  were  MM.  Thomas,  Marmontel, 
the  Marquis  De  Pesay,  and  Baron  De 
Grimm.  Mademoiselle  Necker  at  that 
time  was  only  eleven." 

We  can  well  comprehend  the  stimu- 
lus which  the  intercourse  with  such 
minds  must  have  given  to  the  bud- 
ding intellect  of  the  daughter.  The 
frivolity  of  French  society  was  already 
wearing  away  under  the  influence  of 
the  great  events  which  were  throwing 
their  shadows  before  them ;  and  even 
if  it  had  not  been  so,  Necker's  own 
taste  would  have  secured  a  graver  and 
more  solid  tone  than  prevailed  in  com- 
mon circles.  The  deepest  interests  of 
life  and  of  the  world  were  constantly 
under  discussion.  The  grace  of  the 
old  era  still  lingered ;  the  gravity  of 
fche  new  era  was  stealing  over  men's 
minds  ;  and  the  vivacity  and  brilliancy 
has  never  been  wholly  lost  at 


Paris,  bound  the  two  elements  togeth 
er  in  a  strangely  fascinating  union.  It 
was  a  very  hot-bed  for  the  develop- 
ment of  a  vigorous  young  brain  like 
that  of  Mademoiselle  Necker.  Her 
father,  too,  aided  not  a  little  to  call 
forth  her  powers  ;  he  was  proud  of  her 
talents,  and  loved  to  initiate  her  into  his 
own  philosophic  notions,  and  to  inocu 
late  her  with  his  generous  and  lofty 
purposes; — and  from  her  almost  con- 
stant intercourse  with  him,  and  his 
tenderness  and  indulgent  sympathy — • 
so  different  from  her  mother's  uncaress- 
ing  and  somewhat  oppressive  formal- 
ism— sprung  that  vehement  and  ear- 
nest attachment  with  which  she  re- 
garded him  through  life. 

At  the  age  of  twenty  she  had  at- 
tained a  dangerous  reputation  as  a  wit 
and  a  prodigy ;  she  was  passionately 
fond  of  the  brilliant  society  in  which 
she  lived,  but  set  at  naught  its  re- 
straints, and  trampled  on  its  conven- 
tionalities and  bienseanc°s  in  a  style 
that  was  then  rare,  especially  among 
young  women,  but  which  the  men  for- 
gave in  consequence  of  her  genius,  and 
the  women  in  consideration  of  her  ug- 
liness. Her  intellect  was  preternatu- 
rally  developed,  but  her  heart  seems 
not  to  have  been  touched ;  she  wrote 
and  spoke  of  love  with  earnest- 
ness, with  grace,  even  with  insight, — 
but  as  a  subject  of  speculation  and  de- 
lineation only,  not  of  deep  and  woful 
experience.  At  this  time,  in  1786,  she 
made  a  mariage  de  convenance  with  as 
cool  and  business-like  an  indifference 
as  if  she  had  been  the  most  cold  and 
phlegmatic  of  women.  She  was  a 
great  heiress,  and  Eric  Baron  de  Stae'l 
was  a  handsome  man,  of  noble  birth  and 


372 


MADAME  DE  STAEL. 


good  character.  The  consideration 
which  appears  to  have  chiefly  decided 
the  choice,  both  of  herself  and  her  pa- 
rents, was  that  he  was  an  attache  to 
the  Swedish  Embassy,  was  to  become 
ambassador  himself,  and  was  expect- 
ed to  reside  permanently  at  Paris. 
Parisian  society  had  now  become,  what 
it  always  remained,  an  absolute  necessi- 
ty of  existence  to  Mademoiselle  Necker ; 
and  in  the  arrangement  she  now  made, 
she  married  it  rather  than  the  baron. 
The  three  years  that  followed  her  mar- 
riage were  probably  the  happiest  of 
her  life.  She  was  in  Paris,  the  centre 
of  a  varied  and  brilliant  society,  where 
she  could  not  only  enjoy  intercourse 
with  all  the  greatest  and  most  celebra- 
ted men  of  that  remarkable  epoch,  but 
could  give  free  scope  to  those  wonder- 
ful and  somewhat  redundant  conver- 
sational powers  which  were  at  all  times 
her  greatest  distinction.  We  can  well 
imagine  that  her  singular  union  of 
brilliant  fancy,  solid  reflection,  and 
French  vivacity,  must  have  made  her, 
in  spite  of  the  entire  absence  of  per- 
sonal beauty,  one  of  the  most  attrac- 
tive and  fascinating  of  women.  The 
times  too  were  beyond  all  others  preg- 
nant with  that  strange  excitement 
which  gives  to  social  intercourse  its 
most  vivid  charm.  Everywhere  the 
minds  of  men  were  stirred  to  their  in- 
most depths;  the  deepest  interests 
were  daily  under  discussion ;  the  grand- 
est events  were  evidently  struggling 
towards  their  birth;  the  greatest  in- 
tellects were  bracing  up  their  energies 
for  a  struggle  "  such  as  had  not  been 
seen  since  the  world  was ;"  the  wild- 
est hopes,  the  maddest  prospects,  the 
most  sombre  terrors,  were  agitating 


society  in  turn  ;  some  dreamed  of  the 
regeneration  of  the  world — days  of 
halcyon  bliss — a  land  flowing  with 
milk  and  honey ;  some  dreaded  a  con- 
vulsion, a  chaos,  a  final  and  irrecover- 
able catastrophe ;  everything  was  hur- 
rying onward  to  the  grand  denouement  / 
— and  of  this  denouement  Paris  was  to 
be  the  theatre,  and  Necker,  the  father  of 
our  heroine,  the  guiding  and  presiding 
genius.  All  her  powers  were  aroused, 
and  all  her  feelings  stimulated  to  the 
uttermost ;  she  visited,  she  talked,  she 
intrigued,  she  wrote ; — her  first  literary 
performance,  the  "Lettres  sur  Rous- 
seau," belong  to  this  date.  They  are 
brilliant  and  warm  in  style ;  but  their 
tone  is  that  of  immaturity. 

These  days  soon  past.  Then  follow 
ed  the  Reign  of-  Terror.  And  now 
it  was  that  all  the  sterling  qualities  of 
Madame  de  Stael's  character  came 
forth.  Her  feelings  of  disappointment 
and  disgust  must  have  been  more  vivid 
than  those  of  most,  for  her  hopes  had 
been  pre-eminently  sanguine,  and  her 
confidence  in  her  father's  powers  and 
destiny  unbounded.  Now  all  was  lost ; 
her  father  was  discarded,  her  monarch 
slain,  her  society  scattered  and  deci- 
mated, and  Paris  had  lost  all  its  charms. 
Still  she  remained ;  as  Necker's  daugh- 
ter she  was  still  beloved  by  many 
among  the  people;  as  the  wife  of  an 
ambassador  she  was  as  inviolable  as 
any  one  could  be  in  those  dreadful  days 
With  indomitable  courage,  with  the 
most  daring  and  untiring  zeal,  and  the 
most  truly  feminine  devotion,  she  made 
use  of  both  her  titles  and  influence  to 
aid  the  escape  of  her  friends,  and  to 
save  and  succor  the  endangered.  She 
succeeded  in  persuading  to  temporary 


MADAME  DE  STAEL. 


373 


mercy  some  of  the  most  ferocious  of 
the  revolutionary  chiefs ;  she  concealed 
some  of  the  menaced  emigres  in  her 
house ;  and  it  was  not  till  she  had  ex- 
hausted all  her  resources,  and  incurred 
serious  peril  to  herself  and  her  children, 
that  she  followed  her  friends  into  exile. 
Her  husband,  whose  diplomatic  char- 
acter was  suspended  for  a  while,  re- 
mained in  Holland,  to  be  ready  to 
resume  his  functions  at  the  first  favor- 
able opening.  Madame  de  Stael  join- 
ed her  friends  in  England,  and  estab- 
lished herself  in  a  small  house  near 
Richmond,  where  an  agreeable  society 
soon  gathered  round  her,  consisting, 
besides  a  few  English,  of  M.  de  Talley- 
rand, M.  de  Narbonne,  (whose  life  she 
had  saved  by  concealing  him  in  her 
house,  and  then  dismissing  him  with 
a  false  passport,)  M.  d'Arblay,  (who 
afterwards  married  Miss  Burney,)  and 
one  or  two  female  friends.  Here,  in 
spite  of  poverty,  exile,  and  the  mortifi- 
cation of  failure,  and  the  fearful  tidings 
which  reached  them  by  nearly  every 
post,  they  continued  to  lead  a  cheerful 
and  not  unprofitable  life. 

When  the  re-establishment  of  some- 
thing like  regular  government  in 
France,  in  1795,  permitted  the  Swed- 
ish ambassador  to  resume  his  functions, 
Madame  de  Stael  returned  to  Paris, 
and  passed  her  time  very  happily  for 
the  next  four  years,  alternately  there 
and  with  her  father  at  Coppet.  Then 
came  the  establishment  of  the  Napole- 
onic rule,  and  with  that  ended  Madame 
de  Stael's  peace  and  enjoyment  for 
nearly  fifteen  years.  Bonaparte  dis- 
liked her,  feared  her,  persecuted  her, 
exiled  her,  and  bullied  and  banished 
every  one  who  paid  her  any  attentions, 


or  showed  her  any  kindness.  He  first 
prohibited  her  residence  in  Paris,  then 
in  France ;  and  exile  from  her  native 
land,  and  from  the  scene  of  her  social 
pleasures  and  social  triumphs,  was  to 
her  almost  as  dreadful  as  a  sentence  oi 
death.  Of  course  she  repaid  her  ty- 
rannical persecutor  in  his  own  coin, 
and  with  liberal  interest.  We  need 
not  seek  far  for  the  explanation  of 
their  mutual  animosity.  They  were 
antipathic  in  their  views,  in  their  posi- 
tion, in  every  feeling  of  their  hearts, 
in  every  fibre  of  their  character.  Mad- 
ame de  Stael  was  a  passionate  lover  of 
constitutional  liberty :  Bonaparte  was 
bent  upon  its  overthrow.  The  bril- 
liancy and  varied  attractions  of  Mad- 
ame de  Stael's  society  made  her  an 
actual  power  in  Paris ;  and  Bonaparte 
hated  rivalry  and  could  "bear  no 
brother  near  the  throne."  He  loved 
incense  and  homage ;  and  after  the  18th 
Brumaire,  she  would  render  him  nei- 
ther. She  would  not  flatter  him,  and 
he  could  not  in  his  heart  despise  hei 
as  he  desired  to  do,  and  as  he  wished 
it  to  be  imagined  that  he  did.  Then, 
whenever  they  met  in  society,  she  bor- 
ed him  dreadfully,  and  he  snubbed 
her  rudely.  He  was  cold  and  reserved, 
— she  was  vehement  and  impulsive. 
She  stigmatized  him  as  an  enemy  to 
rational  freedom ;  and  he  pronounced 
her  to  be  an  intriguing  and  exaltee  wo« 
man.  They  both  loved  influence  dear- 
ly ;  and  neither  would  succumb  to  the 
influence  of  the  other.  All  the  em 
peror's  power  and  prestige  could  not 
extort  from  the  woman  one  instant  ot 
submission  or  applause, — all  the  wo- 
man's weapons  of  fascination  and  per 
suasion  were  wasted  and  blunted  on 


374: 


MADAME  DE  STAEL 


the  impenetrable  cuirasse  of  the  des- 
pot. Their  hatred  was  something  in- 
stinctive, and  almost  physical, — as  nat- 
ural and  incurable  as  that  of  cat  and 

dog. 

During  her  fourteen  years  of  exile, 
Madame  de  Stael  led  a  wandering  life ; 
sometimes  residing  at  Coppet;  ever 
and  anon  returning  for  a  short  time  to 
France,  in  hopes  of  being  allowed  to 
remain  there  unmolested,  but  soon  re- 
ceiving a  new  order  to  quit.  She  visited 
Germany  twice,  Italy  once,  and  at 
length  reached  England,  by  way  of 
Russia,  in  1812.  It  was  at  this  period 
of  her  life  that  she  produced  the  works 
which  have  immortalized  her — "  De  la 
Litterature,  De  1'Allemagne,  and  Co- 
rinne,"  and  enjoyed  intercourse  with 
the  most  celebrated  men  of  Europe. 
Nevertheless,  they  were  years  of  great 
wretchedness  to  her;  the  charms  of 
Parisian  society,  in  which  she  lived, 
and  moved,  and  had  her  being,  were 
forbidden  to  her;  she  was  subjected  to 
the  most  annoying  and  petty,  as  well 
as  to  the  most  bitter  and  cruel  perse- 
cutions ;  one  by  one  her  friends  were 
prevented  from  visiting  her,  or  punish- 
ed with  exile  and  disgrace  if  they  did 
visit  her;  she  was  reduced  nearly  to 
solitude — a  state  which  she  herself 
describes  as,  to  a  woman  of  her  viva- 
cious feelings,  almost  worse  than  death. 
Her  sufferings  during  this  part  of  her 
life,  are  described  with  painful  fidelity 
in  her  "  Ten  Years  of  Exile." 
^  Several  of  the  great  men  whose  so- 
ciety she  enjoyed  during  these  memor- 
able years  of  wandering,  have  left  on 
record  their  impression  of  her  genius 
and  manners  ;  and  it  is  curious  to  ob- 
werve  how  uniform  and  self- consistent 


this  impression  everywhere  was.  She 
seems  to  have  excited  precisely  the 
same  emotions  in  the  minds  of  both 
German  literati  and  of  English  politi- 
cians— vast  admiration  and  not  a  little 
fatigue.  Her  conversation  was  bril 
liant  in  the  extreme,  but  apt  to  become 
monologue  and  declamation.  She  was 
too  vivacious  for  any  but  Frenchmen  . 
her  intellect  was  always  in  a  state  of 
restless  and  vehement  activity ;  she 
seemed  to  need  no  relaxation,  and  to 
permit  no  repose.  In  spite  of  her 
great  knowledge,  her  profound  and  sa- 
gacious reflections,  her  sparkling  wit, 
and  her  singular  eloquence^  she  nearly 
always  ended  by  wearying  even  her 
most  admiring  auditors  :  she  left  them 
no  peace  ;  she  kept  them  on  the  stretch ; 
she  ran  them  out  of  breath. 

Schiller,  with  whom  she  was  often 
in  company  at  Weimar,  while  he  fully 
recognized  the  interest  of  her  conver 
sation  in  its  exhibition  of  French  cul 
ture,  and  "  the  clearness,  decidedness 
and  rich  vivacity  of  her  nature,"  was 
overpowered  by  her  oppressive  mono- 
logue and  declamation.  "  One's  only 
grievance,"  he  wrote  to  Goethe,  "  is  the 
altogether  unprecedented  glibness  of 
her  tongue :  you  must  make  yourself  all 
ear  if  you  would  follow  her."  Goethe 
also  complained  of  her  impatience  in 
conversation,  "  never  granting,  on  the 
most  important  topics,  a  moment  of 
reflection,  but  passionately  demanding 
that  we  should  despatch  the  deepest 
concerns,  the  mightiest  occurrences,  as 
lightly  as  if  it  were  a  game  at  shuttle- 
cock." 

Sir  James  Mackintosh,  who  saw 
much  of  her  in  England  and  greatly 
admired  her  talents,  says  of  her 


MADAME  DE  STAEL. 


375 


'*  She  is  one  of  the  few  persons  who 
surpass  expectation;  she  has  every 
sort  of  talent,  and  would  be  universal- 
ly popular  if,  in  society,  she  were  to 
confine  herself  to  her  inferior  talents — 
pleasantry,  anecdote  and  literature — 
which  are  so  much  more  suited  to  con- 
versation than  her  eloquence  and  gen- 
ius." Lord  Byron  says  of  her  in  his 
Diary,  "  Her  works  are  my  delight,  and 
so  is  she  herself — for  half  an  hour. 
But  she  is  a  woman  by  herself,  and  has 
done  more  intellectually  than  all  the 
rest  of  them  together ; — she  ought  to 
have  been  a  man."  Again,  when  in 
Switzerland,  he  wrote :  "  Madame  de 
Stael  has  made  Coppet  as  agreeable  as 
society  and  talent  can  make  any  place 
on  earth."  .  .  .  .  "  She  was-  a 
good  woman  at  heart,  and  the  clever- 
est at  bottom,  but  spoilt  by  a  wish  to 
be — she  knew  not  what.  In  her  own 
house  she  was  amiable  :  in  any  other 
person's  you  wished  her  gone,  and  in 
her  own  again."  In  the  more  intimate 
relations  of  life  few  persons  were  ever 
more  seriously  or  steadfastly  beloved. 
She  was  an  excellent  hostess,  and  one  of 
the  most  warm,  constant,  and  zealous 
of  friends — on  the  whole,  an  admira- 
ble, lovable,  but  somewhat  overpow- 
ering woman.  On  the  abdication  of 
Napoleon  she  rushed  back  to  Paris, 
and  remained  there  with  few  intervals 
till  her  death,  filling  her  drawing-rooms 
with  the  brilliant  society  which  she 
enjoyed  so  passionately,  and  of  which 
she  was  herself  the  brightest  ornament. 
But  she  survived  the  restoration  of  the 
Bourbons  only  a  short  time ;  her  con- 
stitution had  been  seriously  undermin- 
ed by  the  fatigues  and  irritations  she 
had  undergone,  and  she  died  at  Paris, 


July  14th,  1817,  the  anniversary  of  the 
taking  of  the  Bastile,  at  the  age  of 
fifty-one.  Her  husband,  the  Baron  de 
Stael,  died  in  1802.  After  many  years 
of  widowhood,  during  her  residence  at 
Coppet,  she  was  privately  married  to 
Le  Rocca,  of  an  old  family  of  Geneva.* 
The  chief  literary  productions  upon 
which  the  fame  of  Madame  de  Stael 
as  an  author  rests,  are  her  essays  on 
"Literature  considered  in  its  relations 
with  Social  Institutions ;"  her  novels 
"Delphine"  and  "Corinne;"  and  her 
work  on  "  Germany."  A  common 
philosophical  spirit  runs  through  them 
all.  In  the  discussions  of  literature 
and  society  in  their  influence  upon  one 
another,  she  opened  a  field  of  specula- 
tion which  has  been  greatly  improved 
since  she  wrote,  but  which  she  was  one 
of  the  first,  certainly  the  foremost  of 
her  sex,  to  cultivate.  It  was  something 
new  to  listen  to  a  woman,  gifted  with 
the  analytic  and  combining  faculties, 
discoursing  in  a  philosophical  vein  of 
the  laws  which  govern  the  history  of 
the  human  mind  and  of  the  bearing  of 
mental  development  upon  the  improve- 
ment of  the  world.  "While  other 
female  writers,"  wrote  Jeffrey,  "have 
contented  themselves,  for  the  most 
part,  with  embellishing  or  explaining 
the  truths  which  the  more  robust  intel- 
lect of  the  other  sex  had 'previously  es- 
tablished,— in  making  knowledge  more 
familiar,  or  virtue  more  engaging, — or, 
at  most,  in  multiplying  the  finer  dis- 
tinctions which  may  be  detected  about 
the  boundaries  of  taste  or  of  morality 


*  For  the  previous  portion  of  this  notice  we  are 
indebted  to  an  article  on  "  The  Life  and  Times 
of  Madame  de  Stael."  in  the  "  North  British 
Review." 


876 


MADAME  DE   STAEL. 


—and  in  illustrating  the  importance 
of  the  minor  virtues  to  the  general 
happiness  of  life,— this  distinguished 
person  has  not  only  aimed  at  extending 
the  boundaries  of  knowledge,  and  rec- 
tifying the  errors  of  received  opinions 
upon  subjects  of  the  greatest  impor- 
tance, but  has  uniformly  applied  her- 
self to  trace  out  the  operation  of  gen- 
eral causes,  and,  by  combining  the 
past  with  the  present,  and  pointing 
out  the  connexion  and  reciprocal  action 
of  all  co-existent  phenomena,  to  devel- 
op the  harmonious  system  which  actual- 
ly prevails  in  the  apparent  chaos  of 
human  affairs ;  and  to  gain  something 
like  an  assurance  as  to  the  complexion 
of  that  futurity  towards  which  our 
thoughts  are  so  anxiously  driven  by 
the  selfish  as  well  as  the  generous  prin- 
ciples of  our  nature.  We  are  not 
acquainted,  indeed,  with  any  writer 
who  has  made  such  bold  and  vigorous 
attempts  to  carry  the  generalizing 
spirit  of  true  philosophy  into  the  his- 
tory of  literature  and  manners,  or  who 
has  thrown  so  strong  a  light  upon  the 
capricious  and  apparently  unaccount- 
able diversity  of  national  taste,  genius 
and  morality,  by  connecting  them  with 
the  political  structure  of  society,  the 
accidents  of  climate  and  external  rela- 
tion, and  the  variety  of  creeds  and  su- 
perstitions.'"' 

By  the  side  of  the  spirit  of  enquiry 
in  the  mind  of  Madame  de  Stae'l  there 
was  a  certain  intensity  and  enthusiasm 
of  genius  which  tinctured  all  her 
thoughts  and  actions.  Both  were  ex- 
hibited in  her  work  on  Literature. 
By  the  one  she  marshalled  the  facts 
supplied  by  different  countries  bearing 
upon  her  theme;  the  other  was  ex- 


pressed in  her  theory  of  human  per 
fectibility.  She  sought  unity  in  her 
subject  by  connecting  its  scattered 
parts  in  a  law  of  progress  to  be  detect- 
ed mainly  in  the  growth  and  advance 
of  philosophical  speculation  acting 
upon  the  welfare  of  the  world.  Com 
mencing  with  the  literature  of  Greece 
she  traces  with  much  insight  and  sym- 
pathy the  influence  upon  its  great  au- 
thors of  the  peculiar  mythology  and 
political  institutions  of  the  country, 
and  passing  thence  to  Rome  finds  the 
secret  of  her  literature  in  the  conditions 
of  her  national  existence,  as  in  the  ad- 
option of  the  self-reliant  Stoic  philos- 
ophy. Through,  all  the  predominance 
of  the  intellect  is  exhibited.  In  the 
breaking  up  of  the  empire,  and  the 
great  change  which  was  brought  about 
by  the  descent  of  the  northern  nations, 
the  amelioration  of  the  barbarian  is 
mingled  with  the  new  life  of  strength 
and  courage  infused  into  the  conquered 
races.  Christianity,  kept  alive  in  the 
institutions  of  the  Middle  Ages,  with 
the  respect  for  woman  which  attended 
its  progress,  prepared  the  way  for  mod- 
ern civilization,  when  letters  and  phi- 
losophy in  the  awakening  of  the  human 
mind  again  assumed  their  authority. 
Under  this  general  view  is  comprehen- 
ded a  special  estimate  of  the  literature 
of  the  various  European  nations,  in 
which,  if  there  is  often  something  de- 
ficient or  erroneously  conceived,  it  is 
yet  impossible  not  to  admire  the  vivac- 
ity and  force  of  the  author's  mind,  and 
the  wide  range  of  her  studies,  pursued 
under  the  disadvantages  of  her  cheq 
uered  life. 

The  heroines  of  her  novels,  Delphine 
and   Corinne,  are   representations   of 


MADAME  DE  STAEL. 


3T7 


herself  at  different  periods  of  life,  the 
former  in  the  turbulence  of  youth,  the 
latter  in  the  maturity  and  under  the 
disappointments  of  middle  life.  Pas- 
sion tinged  with  melancholy  is  the  in- 
forming spirit  of  Corinne,  which  has 
retained  its  hold  upon  the  reading 
world  by  its  glowing  pictures  of  Italian 
art  and  scenery.  "  With  few  features 
of  a  story,"  writes  "William  Roberts,  in 
a  comparison  of  her  genius  with  that  of 
Hannah  More,  "  the  tale  is  so  contrived 
as  to  keep  attention  and  expectation 
constantly  on  the  stretch,  and  to  occupy 
the  heart  and  engage  its  sympathies  in 
deep  and  continuous  emotion.  The 
reader  is  hurried  on  without  a  breath- 
ing interval,  with  his  eyes  forever  on 
Corinne,  overlooking  a  multitude  of 
absurdities  and  contradictions  for  her 
sake.  All  is  in  subjection  to  the  bright 
lady  of  the  ascendant.  There  is  cer- 
tainly something  very  admirable  in  the 
art  by  which  the  author  has  contrived 
to  merge  the  vanity  of  her  principal 
character  in  the  brilliancy  with  which 
she  has  surrounded  it.  When  Corinne 
comes  forth  in  the  panoply  of  her  en- 
dowments, we  think  no  more  of  her 
vanity  than  of  the  Roman  general  pro- 
ceeding with  his  trophies  in  triumph 
to  the  capitol.  There  is  a  gayety  and 
a  grace  accompanying  all  she  acts  and 
speaks, — a  majesty  in  her  brow,  a  god- 
dess-like gait  in  her  approach,  that 
affects  us  almost  supernaturally.  A 
fatal  passion  seizes  her:  the  Graces 
and  the  Muses  gradually  forsake  her : 
the  diadem  drops  from  her  temples : 
the  incense  of  praise  is  withdrawn :  a 
rapid  dereliction  of  her  powers  lets  her 
down  to  the  level  of  common  beings: 


she  sinks  into  obscurity  and  dies   a 
pitiable  death." 

The  work  of  Madame  de  Stael  oii 
Germany,  originally  printed  in  Paris 
in  1810  and  suppressed  by  order  of 
Napoleon,  was  the  first  to  present  to 
foreign  nations  a  general  review  of  the 
growing  intellectual  wealth  of  the  na- 
tion. It  is  divided  into  four  parts 
treating  respectively  of  "  Germany  and 
the  manners  of  the  Germans;"  of  "Lit- 
erature and  the  Arts ;"  of  "  Philosophy 
and  Morals ;"  of  "  Religion  and  Enthu- 
siasm." "The  voice  of  Europe,"  said 
Sir  James  Mackintosh  in  his  analysis 
of  the  work,  "  has  already  applauded 
the  genius  of  a  national  painter  in  the 
author  of  Corinne.  But  it  was  there 
aided  by  the  power  of  a  pathetic  fiction 
— by  the  variety  and  opposition  of 
national  character — and  by  the  charm 
of  a  country  which  unites  beauty  to 
renown.  Her  work  on  Germany  is 
certainly  the  most '  vigorous  effort  of 
her  genius,  and  probably  the  most 
elaborate  and  masculine  production 
of  the  faculties  of  woman.  What 
other  woman,  indeed,  or  (to  speak 
the  truth  without  reserve)  what  liv 
ing  man  could  have  preserved  all 
the  grace  and  brilliancy  of  Parisian 
society  in  analyzing  its  nature;  ex 
plained  the  most  abstruse  metaphysic- 
al theories  of  Germany  precisely,  yet 
perspicuously  and  agreeably;  and 
combined  the  eloquence  which  inspires 
the  most  pure,  the  most  tender,  and 
the  most  sublime  sentiments  of  virtue 
with  the  enviable  talent  of  gently  in 
dicating  the  defects  of  men  or  of  nations 
by  the  skilfully  softened  touches  of  a 
polite  and  merciful  pleasantry  ? " 


HORATIO    NELSON 


TTORATIO  NELSON,  the  son  of 
JL  _L  Edmund  and  Catherine  Nelson, 
•vas  born  on  the  29th  of  September, 
1758,  at  the  parsonage-house  of  Burn- 
ham-Thorpe,  a  village  in  the  county  of 
Norfolk,  of  which  his  father  was  rec- 
tor. The  maiden  name  of  his  mother 
was  Suckling;  her  grandmother  was 
an  elder  sister  of  Sir  Robert  Walpole, 
and  the  subject  of  this  notice  was 
named  after  the  first  Earl  of  Orford. 
Mrs.  Nelson  died  in  176 7,  leaving  eight 
out  of  eleven  children.  Upon  this  oc- 
casion her  brother,  Captain  Maurice 
Suckling,  of  the  navy,  visited  Mr.  Nel- 
son, and  promised  to  take  care  of  one 
of  the  boys.  Three  years  afterwards, 
when  Horatio  was  only  twelve  years 
of  age,  and  with  a  constitution  natu- 
rally weak,  he  applied  to  his  father  for 
permission  to  go  to  sea  with  his  uncle, 
recently  appointed  to  the  Raisonnable, 
of  sixty-four  guns.  The  uncle  was  ac- 
cordingly written  to,  and  gave  a  reluc- 
tant consent  to  the  proposal.  "  What," 
said  he,  in  reply,  "  has  poor  Horatio 
done,  who  is  so  weak,  that  he  should 
be  sent  to  rough  it  out  at  sea  ?  But  let 
him  come,  and  the  first  time  we  go  into 
action  a  cannon-ball  may  knock  off  his 

Abridged  from  the  "Encyclopaedia  Britannica." 
(378) 


head,  and  provide  for  him  at  once,' 
The  Raisonnable,  on  board  of  which 
he  was  now  placed  as  a  midshipman, 
was  soon  afterwards  paid  off,  and  Cap. 
tain  Suckling  removed  to  the  Triumph 
of  seventy-four  guns,  then  stationed  as 
a  guard-ship  in  the  Thames.  This, 
however,  was  considered  as  too  inac- 
tive a  life  for  a  boy,  and  Nelson  was 
therefore  sent  on  a  voyage  to  the  West 
Indies  in  a  merchant  ship.  "From 
this  voyage  I  returned,"  he  tells  us  in 
his  "Sketch  of  my  Life,"  "to  the  Tri 
umph  at  Chatham  in  July,  1772 ;  and, 
if  I  did  not  improve  in  my  education, 
I  returned  a  practical  seaman,  with  a 
horror  of  the  royal  navy,  and  with  a 
saying  then  constant  with  the  seamen, 
'Aft,  the  most  honor;  forward,  the 
better  man.' ';  While  in  connection 
with  this  guard-ship,  he  had  the  oppor- 
tunity of  becoming  a  skilful  pilot,  an 
acquirement  which  he  afterwards  had 
frequent  occasion  to  turn  to  account. 

Not  many  months  after  his  return, 
his  inherent  love  of  enterprise  was  ex- 
cited by  hearing  that  two  ships  were 
fitting  out  for  a  voyage  of  discovery 
towards  the  North  Pole.  From  the 
difficulties  expected  on  such  service, 
these  vessels  were  to  take  out  none 


.'fc- 


tmisaf-,  Wilson  £.  Co..Pablisliers  New  York. 


HORATIO  JtfELSOK 


379 


bat  effective  men,  instead  of  the  usual 
number  of  boys.  This,  however,  did 
not  deter  Nelson  from  soliciting  to 
be  received,  and  by  his  uncle's  interest 
he  was  admitted  as  cockswain  under 
Captain  Lutwidge,  the  second  in  com- 
mand. The  voyage  was  undertaken 
in  consequence  of  an  application  from 
the  Royal  Society ;  and  the  Honorable 
Captain  John  C.  Phipps,  eldest  son  of 
Lord  Mulgrave,  volunteered  his  ser- 
vices to  command  the  expedition.  The 
Racehorse  and  Carcass,  bombs,  were 
selected  as  the  strongest  ships,  and  the 
expedition  sailed  from  the  Nore  on  the 
4th  of  June,  1773,  and  returned  to 
England  in  October.  During  this  voy- 
age Nelson  gave  several  indications  of 
that  daring  and  fearless  spirit  which 
ever  afterwards  distinguished  him. 

The  ships  were  paid  off  shortly  after 
their  return,  and  the  youth  was  then 
placed  by  his  uncle  with  Captain  Far- 
mer, in  the  Seahorse,  of  twenty  guns, 
which  was  about  to  sail  for  the  East 
Indies  in  the  squadron  of  Sir  Edward 
Hughes.  In  this  ship  he  was  rated  as 
a  midshipman,  and  attracted  attention 
by  his  general  good  conduct.  But, 
when  he  had  been  about  eighteen 
months  in  India,  he  felt  the  effects  of 
the  climate  of  that  country,  so  peril- 
ous to  European  constitutions,  and  be- 
came so  enfeebled  by  disease  that  he 
lost  for  a  time  the  use  of  his  limbs, 
and  was  brought  almost  to  the  brink 
of  the  grave.  He  embarked  for  Eng- 
land in  the  Dolphin,  Captain  Pigot, 
with  a  body  broken  down  by  sickness, 
and  spirits  which  had  sunk  with  his 
strength.  But  his  health  materially 
improved  during  the  voyage,  and  his 
nati  ve  air  speedily  repaired  the  injury 


it  had  sustained.     On  the  8th  of  April, 

1777,  he  passed,  with  much  credit  to 
himself,  his  examination  for  a  lieuten- 
ancy, and  next  day  received  his  com- 
mission as   second  lieutenant  of   the 
Lowestoffe,  of  thirty-two  guns,  then 
fitting  out  for  Jamaica.     In  this  frigate 
he  cruised  against  the  Ajnerican  and 
French  privateers  which  were  at  that 
time  harassing  the  English   trade  in 
the  "West  Indies;  distinguished  him- 
self on  various  occasions  by  his  activ- 
ity   and    enterprise ;    and    formed    a 
friendship  with  his  captain,  Locker,  of 
the  Lowestoffe,  which  continued  during 
his  life.     Having  been  warmly  recom- 
mended to  Sir  Peter  Parker,  the  com- 
mander-in-chief  upon  that  station,  he 
was  removed  into  the  Bristol  flag-ship, 
and  soon  afterwards  became  first  lieu- 
tenant.     On   the   8th   of    December, 

1778,  he  was  appointed  commander  of 
the  Badger  brig,  in  which  he  rendered 
important  assistance  in   rescuing  the 
crew  of  the  Glasgow,  when  that  ship 
was  accidentally  set  on  fire  in  Montego 
Bay,  Jamaica.     On  the  llth  of  June, 

1779,  he  obtained  the  rank  of  post-cap- 
tain, and  with  it  the  command  of  the 
Hinchinbrook,  of  twenty-eight   guns. 
As  Count  d'Estaing,  with  a  fleet  of  125 
sail,  men-of-war  and  transports,  and  a 
reputed    force   of   25,000    men,    now 
threatened  Jamaica  from  St.  Domingo, 
Nelson  offered  his  services  to  the  ad- 
miral  and  governor-general,  Dalling, 
and  was  appointed  to  command  the 
batteries  of  Fort  Charles  at  Port  Royal, 
the  most  important  post  in  the  island. 
D'Estaing,   however,  attempted  noth- 
ing with  this  formidable   armament, 
and  the  British  general  was  thus  left 
to   execute   a    design  which   he  had 


382 


HOEATIO  NELSON. 


Nelson  greatly  distinguished  himself, 
manoeuvring  and  fighting  his  ship  with 
equal  ability  and  determination ;  and 
when  the  action  was  renewed  the  fol- 
lowing day,  he  had  the  honor  of  hoist- 
ing the  English  colors  on  board  of  the 
Qa  Jra  and  the  Censeur,  which  both 
struck  to  him,  and  were  the  only  ships 
of  the  enemy  taken  on  that  occasion. 
About  this  time  Nelson  was  made 
colonel  of  marines,  a  mark  of  approba- 
tion which  he  had  rather  wished  for 
than  expected;  and  soon  afterwards 
the  Agamemnon  was  ordered  to  Genoa 
to  co-operate  with  the  Austrian  and 
Sardinian  forces.  This  was  indeed  a 
new  line  of  service,  imposing  multi- 
farious duties,  and  involving  great  re- 
sponsibility;  yet  it  was  also  one  for 
which  Nelson  had  already  evinced  a 
singular  aptitude,  and  in  which,  had 
he  been  at  all  seconded  by  the  land 
forces,  his  assistance  would  have  led 
to  important  results.  Through  the 
gross  misconduct,  however,  of  the  Aus- 
trian general,  Devins,  the  allies  were 
completely  defeated  by  an  army  of 
boys,  and  the  French  obtained  posses- 
sion of  the  Genoese  coast  from  Savona 
to  Voltri,  thus  intercepting  the  direct 
communication  between  the  Austrian 
army  and  the  English  fleet.  After  this 
disgraceful  affair,  the  Agamemnon  was 
recalled,  and  sailed  for  Leghorn  to  re- 
fit, being  literally  riddled  with  shot, 
and  having  all  her  masts  and  yards 
seriously  damaged. 

Sir  John  Jervis  having  arrived  to 
take  the  command  in  the  Mediterra- 
nean, Nelson  sailed  from  Leghorn  in 
the  Agamemnon,  which  had  now  been 
repaired,  and  joined  the  admiral  in  St. 
Fioremo  Bay.  When  the  French  took 


possession  of  Leghorn,  he  blockaded 
that  port,  and  landed  a  force  in  the 
Isle  of  Elba  to  secure  Porto  Ferrajo. 
Soon  afterwards  he  took  the  island  of 
Capraja ;  and  the  British  cabinet  hav- 
ing resolved  to  evacuate  Corsica,  he 
ably  performed  this  humiliating  ser- 
vice. He  was  then  ordered  to  hoist 
his  broad  pennant  on  board  of  the  Mi- 
nerve  frigate,  Captain  George  Cock- 
burn,  and  to  proceed  with  the  Blanche 
to  Porto  Ferrajo,  and  bring  away  the 
troops  and  stores  left  at  that  place. 
On  his  way  thither  he  fell  in  with  two 
Spanish  frigates,  the  Sabina  and  Ceres, 
the  former  of  which,  after  an  action  of 
three  hours,  during  which  the  Span- 
iards lost  one  hundred  and  sixty-four 
men,  struck  to  the  Minerve.  The  Ceres, 
however,  had  got  off  from  the  Blanche ; 
and  as  the  prisoners  had  hardly  been 
conveyed  on  board  of  the  Minerve 
when  another  enemy's  frigate  came  up, 
Nelson  was  compelled  to  cast  off  the 
prize  and  go  a  second  time  into  action. 
But,  after  a  short  trial  of  strength,  this 
new  antagonist  wore  and  hauled  off ; 
and  as  a  Spanish  squadron  of  two  sail 
of  the  line  and  two  frigates  now  came 
in  sight,  the  commodore  made  all  sail 
for  Porto  Ferrajo,  whence  he  soon  re- 
turned with  a  convoy  to  Gibraltar. 
Off  the  mouth  of  the  Straits  he  fell  in 
with  the  Spanish  fleet,  and  reaching 
the  station  off  Cape  St.  Vincent  on  the 
13th  of  February,  1797,  he  communi- 
cated this  intelligence  to  Sir  John  Jer- 
vis, by  whom  he  was  now  directed  to 
shift  his  broad  pennant  on  board  the 
Captain  of  seventy-four  guns.  Before 
sunset  the  signal  was  made  to  prepare 
for  action,  and  to  keep  in  close  order 
during  the  night ;  and  at  daybreak  on 


HOEAT1O  NELSON. 


383 


the  14th  the  enemy  wore  in  sight.  The 
British  force  consisted  of  two  ships  of 
100  guns,  two  of  98,  two  of  90,  eight 
of  74,  and  one  of  64,  with  four  frigates, 
a  sloop,  and  a  cutter;  the  Spaniards 
had  one  ship  of  136  guns,  six  of  112 
guns  each,  two  of  84,  and  eighteen  of 
74,  with  ten  frigates  and  a  brig.  The 
admiral,  Sir  John  Jervis,  made  signal 
to  tack  in  succession.  Nelson,  whose 
station  was  in  the  rear  of  the  British 
line,  perceiving  that  the  Spaniards  were 
bearing  up  before  the  wind,  with  an  in- 
tention of  forming  line  and  joining  their 
separated  ships,  or  of  avoiding  an  en- 
gagement, disobeyed  the  signal  with- 
out a  moment's  hesitation,  and  ordered 
his  ship  to  be  wore.  This  at  once 
brought  him  into  action  with  seven  of 
the  enemy's  ships,  four  of  which  were 
first-rates.  After  a  desperate  conflict, 
in  which  Nelson  was  nobly  supported 
by  Troubridge  in  the  Colloden  and  by 
Collingwood  in  the  Excellent,  the  Sal- 
vador del  Mundo  and  San  Isidro  drop- 
ped astern,  and  the  San  Josef  fell  on 
board  the  San  Nicolas.  The  Captain 
being  now  incapable  of  further  service, 
either  in  the  line  or  in  chase,  Nelson 
directed  the  helm  to  be  put  a-starboard, 
and  calling  the  boarders,  ordered  them 
to  board.  The  San  Nicolas  was  carried 
after  a  short  struggle,  Nelson  himself 
boarding  her  through  the  cabin  win- 
dows. The  San  Josef  was  instantly 
boarded  from  the  San  Nicolas,  the  gal- 
lant little  commodore  leading  the  way, 
and  exclaiming,  "  Westminster  Abbey 
or  victory !  "  This  was  the  work  of 
an  instant;  but  before  Nelson  could 
reach  the  quarter-deck  of  the  Spanish 
ship,  an  officer  looked  over  the  rail  and 
said  they  surrendered.  This  daring 


achievement  was  effected  with  com- 
paratively small  loss,  and  Nelson  him- 
self  received  only  a  few  bruises.  The 
Captain,  however,  had  suffered  severely 
in  the  action.  She  had  lost  her  fore- 
topmast;  not  a  sail,  shroud,  nor  rope 
was  left;  her  wheel  had  been  shot 
away ;  and  a  fourth  part  of  the  loss 
sustained  by  the  whole  squadron  had 
fallen  upon  that  single  ship.  As  soon 
as  the  action  was  discontinued,  Nelson 
went  on  board  the  admiral's  ship.  Sir 
John  Jervis  received  him  with  open 
arms,  and  said  he  could  not  sufficiently 
thank  him.  For  this  victory  the  com- 
mander-in-chief  was  rewarded  with  a 
peerage  and  the  title  of  Earl  St.  Vin- 
cent; whilst  Nelson,  who,  before  the 
action  was  known  in  England,  had 
been  advanced  to  the  rank  of  rear-ad- 
miral, was  knighted,  and  received  the 
insignia  of  the  Bath,  and  a  gold  medal 
from  his  sovereign. 

In  April,  1797,  Sir  Horatio  Nelson, 
having  hoisted  his  flag  as  rear-admiral 
of  the  blue,  was  sent  to  bring  away  the 
troops  from  Porto  Ferrajo ;  and  having 
performed  this  service,  he  shifted  his 
flag  to  the  Theseus,  a  ship  which  had 
taken  part  in  the  mutiny  in  England. 
Whilst  in  the  Theseus  he  was  employ- 
ed in  the  command  of  the  inner  squad- 
ron at  the  blockade  of  Cadiz.  During 
this  service  his  personal  courage  was 
eminently  signalized.  In  a  night  at- 
tack upon  the  Spanish  gun-boats  (3rd 
of  July,  1797),  his  barge  was  assailed 
by  an  armed  launch,  carrying  twenty- 
six  men,  whilst  he  had  only  the  usual 
complement  of  ten  men  and  the  cocks- 
wain, besides  Captain  Freemantle.  Af- 
ter a  severe  conflict,  hand  to  hand, 
eighteen  of  the  enemy  weie  killed,  all 


884 


HORATIO  NELSON". 


the  rest  wounded,  and  the  launch 
taken.  Twelve  days  after  this  rencon- 
tre, Nelson  sailed  at  the  head  of  an  ex- 
pedition against  Teneriffe.  It  having 
been  ascertained  that  a  homeward- 
bound  Manilla  ship  had  recently  put 
into  Santa  Cruz,  the  expedition  was 
undertaken  in  the  hope  of  capturing 
this  rich  prize.  But  it  was  not  fitted 
out  upon  the  scale  which  Nelson  had 
proposed ;  no  troops  were  embarked ; 
and  although  the  attack  was  made 
with  great  intrepidity,  the  attempt 
failed.  The  boats  of  the  squadron  being 
manned,  a  landing  was  effected  early 
in  the  night,  and  Santa  Cruz  taken 
and  occupied  for  about  seven  hours; 
but  the  assailants,  finding  it  impracti- 
cable to  storm  the  citadel,  were  obliged 
to  prepare  for  retreat,  which  they  ef- 
fected without  molestation,  agreeably 
to  stipulations  which  had  been  made 
with  the  Spanish  governor  by  Captain 
Troubridge,  whose  firmness  and  pre- 
sence of  mind  were  conspicuously  dis- 
played on  this  occasion.  The  total  loss 
of  the  English  in  killed,  wounded,  and 
drowned,  amounted  to  two  hundred 
and  fifty.  Nelson  himself  was  amongst 
the  wounded,  having,  in  stepping  out 
of  the  boat  to  land,  received  a  shot 
through  the  right  elbow,  which  shat- 
tered the  whole  arm,  and  rendered  am- 
putation necessary.  Nelson  was  now 
obliged  to  return  to  England,  where 
honors  awaited  him  sufficient  to  cheer 
his  mind  amidst  the  sufferings  occa- 
sioned by  the  loss  of  his  arm.  Letters 
were  addressed  to  him  by  the  first  lord 
of  the  Admiralty  and  the  Duke  of 
Clarence ;  the  freedom  of  the  cities  of 
London  and  Bristol  was  transmitted  to 
him ;  he  was  invested  with  the  order 


of  the  Bath;  and  he  also  received  a 
pension  of  one  thousand  pounds  a 
year.  His  sufferings  from  the  lost 
limb,  however,  were  long  and  painful. 
In  April,  1798,  he  had  so  far  recovered, 
however,  as  to  hoist  his  flag  on  board 
the  Vanguard,  and  was  ordered  to  re- 
join Earl  St.  Vincent.  Immediately 
on  his  arrival,  he  was  despatched  to 
the  Mediterranean  with  a  small  squad 
ron,  to  ascertain,  if  possible,  the  object 
of  the  great  expedition  which  was  then 
fitting  out  at  Toulon.  He  sailed  from 
Gibraltar  on  the  9th  of  May  for  the 
Mediterranean,  with  three  seventy 
fours,  four  frigates,  and  a  sloop  of  war. 
On  the  19th  the  squadron  reached 
the  Gulf  of  Lyons;  and  on  the  22d  a 
violent  storm  inflicted  very  serious  in- 
jury on  the  Vanguard ;  but  after  ex- 
traordinary exertions,  the  Vanguard 
was  refitted  in  four  days,  and  he  re- 
ceived a  reinforcement  of  ten  ships  of 
the  line  and  one  of  fifty  guns,  under 
the  command  of  Commodore  Trou- 
bridge. Baffled  in  his  attempts  to  get 
sight  of  the  French  fleet,  he  kept 
scouring  the  Mediterranean  waters  un- 
der a  press  of  sail  night  and  day  for 
nearly  two  months,  till,  on  the  1st  of 
August,  1798,  he  came  in  sight  of  Al- 
exandria, and  at  four  in  the  afternoon 
descried  the  French  fleet.  For  several 
days  previous  to  this  the  admiral  had 
scarcely  taken  either  food  or  sleep.  He 
now  ordered  his  dinner  to  be  served, 
whilst  preparations  were  making  for 
battle ;  and  when  his  officers  rose  from 
table  to  repair  to  their  several  stations, 
he  said  to  them, "  Before  this  time  to- 
moiTow  I  shall  have  gained  a  peerage, 
or  Westminster  Abbey." 

Brueys,  the  admiral  of  the  French 


HOEATIO  NELSON. 


385 


fleet,  had  moored  his  ships  in  Aboukir 
Bay,  in  a  strong  and  compact  line  of 
battle ;  the  headmost  vessel  being  close 
to  a  shoal  on  the  north-west,  and  the 
rest  of  the  fleet  forming  a  kind  of  curve 
along  the  line  of  deep  water,  so  as  not 
to  be  turned  by  any  means  on  the 
south-west.  The  advantage  of  num- 
bers, both  in  ships,  guns,  and  men 
was  in  favor  of  the  French.  They  had 
thirteen  ships  of  the  line  and  four  frig- 
ates, carrying  1196  guns,  and  11,230 
men.  The  English  had  the  same  num- 
ber of  ships  of  the  line,  and  one  fifty- 
gun  ship,  carrying  in  all  1012  guns 
and  8068  men.  The  English  ships 
were  all  seventy-fours ;  the  French  had 
three  eighty-gun  ships,  and  one  three- 
decker  of  120  guns.  Nelson,  accord- 
ing to  the  preconceived  plan  of  attack, 
resolved  to  keep  entirely  on  the  outer 
side  of  the  French  line,  and  to  station 
his  ships,  as  far  as  he  was  able,  one  on 
the  outer  bow,  and  another  on  the 
outer  quarter,  of  each  of  the  enemy's, 
thus  doubling  on  a  certain  portion  of 
their  line.  The  battle  commenced  at 
half-past  six  o'clock,  a  little  before 
sunset.  As  the  squadron  advanced,  the 
enemy  opened  a  steady  fire  from  the 
starboard  side  of  their  line  into  the 
bows  of  the  leading  British  ships.  It 
was  received  in  silence,  whilst  the  men 
on  board  of  each  ship  were  employed 
aloft  in  furling  the  sails,  and  below  in 
tending  the  braces  and  making  ready 
for  anchoring;  a  proceeding  which  told 
the  enemy  that  escape  was  impossible. 
Four  ships  of  the  British  squadron, 
having  been  detached  previously  to 
the  discovery  of  the  French  fleet,  were 
at  a  considerable  distance  when  the 
battle  commenced,  and,  on  coming  up, 
49 


the  Culloden,  the  foremost  of  these 
ships,  suddenly  grounded  in  the  dark- 
ness, and,  notwithstanding  the  great- 
est exertions,  could  not  be  got  off  in 
time  to  bear  a  part  in  the  action.  The 
first  two  ships  of  the  French  line  had 
been  dismasted  within  a  quarter  of  an 
hour  after  the  commencment  of  the 
action ;  and  the  others  had  suffered  so 
severely  that  victory  was  already  cer- 
tain. At  half-past  eight  o'clock  the 
third,  fourth,  and  fifth  were  taken 
possession  of.  In  the  meantime  Nel- 
son had  received  a  severe  wound  on 
the  head  from  a  langridge  shot,  which 
cut  a  large  flap  of  skin  from  the  fore- 
head, and  occasioned  such  an  effusion 
of  blood  that  the  injury  was  at  first  be- 
lieved to  be  mortal.  But  when  the 
surgeon  came  to  examine  the  wound, 
he  found  that  the  hurt  was  merely  su- 
perficial, and  requested  that  the  admi- 
ral would  remain  quiet.  Nelson,  how- 
ever, could  not  rest,  and  having  called 
for  his  secretary,  had  begun  to  dictate 
his  dispatches,  when  suddenly  a  cry 
was  heard  upon  deck  that  L' Orient 
was  on  fire.  In  the  confusion,  he 
found  his  way  up  unassisted  and  un- 
noticed, and  having  appeared  on  the 
quarter-deck,  immediately  gave  orders 
that  boats  should  be  sent  to  the  relief 
of  the  enemy.  It  was  about  ten  min- 
utes after  nine  o'clock  when  the  fire 
broke  out  in  L' Orient.  Brueys  was 
dead.  He  had  received  three  wounds, 
yet  would  not  leave  his  post;  and 
when  a  fourth  cut  him  almost  in  two, 
he  desired  to  be  left  to  die  upon  deck. 
In  the  meanwhile  the  flames  soon  mas- 
tered the  devoted  ship,  and  by  the 
light  of  the  conflagration,  the  situa- 
tion of  both  fleets  could  be  perceived, 


386 


HOEATIO  KELSOK. 


their  colors  being  clearly  distinguish- 
able. About  ten  o'clock  the  ship  blew 
up  with  a  tremendous  explosion,  which 
was  followed  by  a  pause  not  less  awful. 
The  firing  immediately  ceased ;  and  the 
first  sound  which  broke  the  silence  was 
the  dash  of  her  shattered  masts  and 
yards  falling  into  the  water  from  the 
vast  height  to  which  they  had  been 
projected  by  the  explosion.  The  com- 
bat recommenced  with  the  ships  to  lee- 
ward of  the  centre,  and  continued  till 
about  three  in  the  morning.  Of  thir- 
teen sail  of  the  line,  nine  were  taken, 
two  burnt,  and  two  escaped ;  and  of 
four  frigates,  one  was  burnt  and  an- 
other sunk.  In  short,  it  was  a  con- 
quest rather  than  a  victory.  The  French 
fleet  had  been  annihilated  ;  and  if  the 
English  admiral  had  been  provided 
with  small  craft,  nothing  could  have 
prevented  the  destruction  of  the  store- 
ships  and  transports  in  the  harbor  of 
Alexandria. 

Nelson  was  now  at  the  very  summit 
of  glory.  Congratulations,  rewards, 
and  honors  were  showered  upon  him 
by  all  the  foreign  states  and  powers,  to 
which  his  victory  promised  a  respite 
from  French  aggression.  In  his  own 
country  he  was  created  Baron  Nelson 
of  the  Nile  and  of  Burnham-Thorpe, 
with  a  pension  of  £2,000  a  year  for  his 
own  life  and  those  of  his  two  immediate 
successors.  A  grant  of  $10,000  was 
voted  to  Nelson  by  the  East  India 
Company :  the  Turkish  company  pre- 
sented him  with  a  piece  of  plate ;  the 
city  of  London  bestowed  honorary 
swords  on  the  admiral  and  his  cap- 
tains ;  and  the  thanks  of  the  parlia- 
ment and  gold  medals  were  voted  to 
Him  and  all  the  captains  engaged  in 


the  action.  In  the  distribution  of  re- 
wards he  was  particularly  anxious  that 
the  captain  and  first  lieutenant  of  the 
Culloden  should  not  be  passed  over 
because  of  their  misfortune.  "  It  was 
Troubridge,"  said  he,  in  addressing  the 
admiralty,"  who  equipped  the  squadron 
so  soon  at  Syracuse ;  it  was  Troubridge 
who  exerted  himself  for  me,  after  the 
action ;  it  was  Troubridge  who  saved 
the  Culloden,  where  none  that  I  know 
in  the  service  would  have  attempted 
it." 

Having  made  the  necessary  arrange- 
ments in  regard  to  the  prizes,  and  left 
a  squadron  before  Alexandria,  Nelson 
stood  out  to  sea  on  the  seventeenth 
day  after  the  battle,  and  early  on  the 
22d  of  September  appeared  in  sight  of 
Naples,  where  the  Culloden  and  Alex- 
ander had  preceded  him,  and  given  no- 
tice of  his  approach.  Here  he  was  re- 
ceived with  every  demonstration  of  joy 
and  triumph,  both  by  the  royal  family 
and  the  people ;  and  it  was  here  he 
formed  that  unfortunate  connection 
with  Lady  Hamilton  which  exercised 
so  baneful  an  influence  on  the  rest  of 
his  life.  The  state  of  Naples  at  this 
period  was  deplorable.  The  king,  like 
the  rest  of  his  race,  was  passionately 
fond  of  field  sports,  and  cared  for  al- 
most nothing  else.  The  queen  had  all 
the  vices  of  the  house  of  Austria,  with 
little  to  mitigate  and  nothing  to  enno- 
ble them.  The  people  were  sunk  in 
ignorance  and  debased  by  misgovern- 
ment ;  at  once  turbulent  and  cowardly, 
ferocious  and  indolent,  irreligious  and 
fanatical.  Nelson  was  fully  sensible 
of  the  depravity  and  weakness  of  all 
by  whom  he  was  surrounded ;  yet,  se- 
duced by  the  blandishments  of  the 


HOEATIO  NELSON. 


387 


queen,  the  flatteries  of  the  court,  and 
the  pernicious  influence  which  Lady 
Hamilton  now  began  to  exercise  over 
his  mind,  he  suffered  himself  to  be  im- 
plicated in  transactions  which,  to  say  the 
least  of  it,  were  not  calculated  to  bring 
honor  to  his  country,  or  to  heighten 
his  own  fame.  The  defeat  of  Mack  at 
Castellana,  and  the  advance  of  the 
French  towards  Naples,  were  followed 
by  the  flight  of  the  royal  family,  who 
were  conveyed  by  Nelson  to  Palermo. 
After  this  an  armistice  was  signed  (10th 
of  January,  1799),  by  which  the  great- 
er part  of  the  kingdom  was  given  up 
to  the  enemy ;  and  this  cession  neces- 
sarily led  to  the  loss  of  the  whole. 
Naples  was  occupied  by  the  French 
under  Championnet,  and  the  short-liv- 
ed Parthenopean  republic  soon  after- 
wards established.  But  the  successes 
of  the  allies  in  Italy  speedily  changed 
the  face  of  affairs,  and  prepared  the 
way  for  the  restoration  of  the  exiled 
monarch. 

Relying  on  the  diminished  numbers 
of  the  enemy,  whose  force  had  been 
greatly  reduced,  the  royalists  took  the 
field,  and  Cardinal  Ruffo  appeared  at 
the  head  of  an  armed  rabble,  which  he 
called  the  Christian  army.  Captain 
Foote,  in  the  Seahorse,  with  some  Nea- 
politan frigates,  and  a  few  smaller  ves- 
sels, was  ordered  to  co-operate  with  this 
force,  and  to  give  it  all  the  assistance 
in  his  power.  Ruffo,  advancing  with- 
out any  plan,  but  ready  to  take  advan- 
tage of  any  accident  which  might  oc- 
cur, now  approached  Naples.  Fort 
St.  Elmo,  which  commands  the  city, 
was  garrisoned  by  French  troops; 
but  the  castles  of  Uovo  and  Nuovo, 
commanding  the  anchorage,  were  chief- 


ly defended  by  the  Neapolitan  "  patri 
ots,"  the  leading  men  amongst  them 
having  taken  shelter  there.  As  the 
possession  of  these  castles  would  great- 
ly facilitate  the  reduction  of  Fort  St. 
Elmo,  Ruffo  proposed  to  the  garrison 
to  capitulate,  on  condition  that  their 
persons  and  property  should  be  re- 
spected, and  that  they  should  at  their 
own  option,  either  be  sent  to  Toulon 
or  remain  at  Naples,  without  being 
molested  in  their  persons.  These  terms 
were  accepted,  and  the  capitulation 
was  signed  by  the  cardinal,  the  Rus- 
sian and  Turkish  commanders,  and  al- 
so by  Captain  Foote  as  commanding 
the  British  force.  But  Nelson,  who 
soon  afterwards  arrived  in  the  bay 
with  a  large  fleet,  made  a  signal  to  an- 
nul the  treaty,  declaring  that  he  would 
grant  to  rebels  no  other  terms  than 
those  of  unconditional  submission ;  and 
notwithstanding  the  strenuous  opposi- 
tion of  the  cardinal,  the  garrisons  of 
the  castles  were  delivered  over  as  reb- 
els to  the  vengeance  of  the  Sicilian 
court.  This  questionable  transaction 
was  followed  by  the  execution  of  Car- 
accioli.  This  aged  prince,  a  man  who 
hitherto  had  borne  a  high  character, 
and  who  was  a  commodore  in  the  Nea« 
politan  navy,  had,  from  some  motive  or 
other,  joined  the  enemy ;  and  after  be- 
ing tried  by  a  court-martial  of  Neapol- 
itan officers  assembled  on  board  of  the 
British  flag-ship,  was  found  guilty,  and 
sentenced  to  death.  This  sentence  Lord 
Nelson  ordered  to  be  carried  into  exe- 
cution the  same  evening,  on  board  the 
Sicilian  frigate  La  Minerva.  As  a  re- 
ward for  these  services,  which  have,  in 
the  judgment  of  many,  left  a  blot  on 
the  scutcheon  of  the  great  admiral. 


388 


HOKATIO  NELSON. 


Nelson  received  from  the  Sicilian  court 
a  sword  splendidly  enriched  with  dia- 
monds, in  addition  to  the  dukedom  of 
Bronte,  with  a  domain  worth  about 
£3,000  a  year. 

After  the  appointment  of  Lord  Keith 
to  the  chief  command  of  the  fleet  in  the 
Mediterranean,  Nelson  was  so  deeply 
mortified  that  he  made  preparations 
for  his  return  to  England;  and,  as  a 
ship  could  not  be  spared  to  convey  him 
thither,  he  traveled  through  Germany 
to  Hamburg,  in  company  with  Sir 
William  and  Lady  Hamilton,  and  hav- 
ing embarked  at  Cuxhaven,  landed  at 
Yarmouth  on  the  6th  of  November, 

1800,  after  an  absence  of  three  years 
from  his  native  country.    He  was  wel- 
comed in  England  with  every  mark  of 
popular  respect   and   admiration ;    in 
the  towns  through  which  he  passed 
the  people  came  out  to  meet  him,  and 
in  London  he  was  feasted  by  the  city, 
drawn  by  the  populace,  thanked  for 
his  victory  by   the   common   council, 
and  presented  with  a  gold-hilted  sword 
studded  with  diamonds.    He  had  now 
every  earthly  blessing  except  domestic 
happiness,   which,  in   consequence   of 
his  infatuated   attachment    to    Lady 
Hamilton,   he  had  forfeited  forever. 
Before  he  had  been  three  months  in 
England  he  separated  from  Lady  Nel- 
son, after  much  uneasiness  and  recri- 
mination on  both  sides.     On   taking 
final  leave  of  her,  on   13th  January, 

1801,  he   emphatically  said,    "  I   call 
God  to  witness  there   is   nothing   in 
you  or   your   conduct   I   wish   other- 
wise."    His  best  friends  remonstrated 
against  this  causeless  and  cruel  deser- 
tion ;  but  their  expostulations  produc- 
ed no  other  effect  than  to  make  him 


displeased  with  them,  and  dissatisfied 
with  himself. 

The  three  northern  courts  of  Den> 
mark,  Sweden,  and  Russia,  had  now 
formed  a  confederacy  for  the  purpose 
of  setting  limits  to  the  naval  preten- 
sions of  Great  Britain ;  and  as  such  a 
combination,  under  the  influence  of 
France,  would  soon  have  become  for- 
midable, the  British  cabinet  instantly 
prepared  to  crush  it.  With  this  view 
a  formidable  fleet  was  fitted  out  for 
the  North  Seas,  and  the  chief  com- 
mand of  it  given  to  Sir  Hyde  Parker ; 
under  whom  Nelson,  who  had  recently 
been  made  vice-admiral  of  the  blue, 

\  * 

consented  to  serve  as  second  in  com- 
mand. The  fleet  sailed  from  Yarmouth 
on  the  12th  of  March,  1801 ;  and  on 
the  30th  of  the  same  month,  Lord  Nel- 
son, having  shifted  his  flag  from  the 
St.  George  to  the  Elephant,  led  the 
way  through  the  Sound,  which  was 
passed  without  any  loss.  The  Danea 
had  made  every  preparation  for  a  deter- 
mined resistance.  Besides,  the  navi- 
gation was  little  known  and  extremely 
intricate;  all  the  buoys  had  been  re- 
moved ;  the  channel  was  considered  as 
impracticable  for  so  large  a  fleet ;  and 
in  a  council  of  war,  held  on  board  of  the 
flag -ship,  considerable  diversity  of 
opinion  prevailed.  Nelson,  however, 
cut  short  the  discussion  by  offering  his 
services  for  the  attack,  requiring  only 
ten  sail  of  the  line  and  the  whole  of 
the  smaller  craft.  Sir  Hyde  Parker 
assented,  but  gave  him  two  more  line- 
of-battle  ships  than  he  had  asked,  and 
left  everything  to  his  own  judgment. 
On  the  morning  of  the  first  of  April, 
the  whole  fleet  moved  to  an  anchorage 
within  two  leagues  of  the  town ;  and 


HORATIO   NELSON. 


389 


about  one  o'clock,  Nelson,  having  com- 
pleted his  last  examination  of  the 
ground,  made  the  signal  to  weigh, 
which  was  received  with  a  shout 
throughout  the  whole  division  destin- 
ed for  the  attack.  They  weighed  with 
a  light  and  favorable  wind,  the  small 
craft  pointing  out  the  course  to  be  fol- 
lowed ;  and  the  whole  division,  having 
coasted  along  the  shoal  called  the  Mid- 
dle Ground,  doubled  its  farther  extrem- 
ity, and  anchored  there  just  as  the  dark- 
ness closed,  the  signal  to  prepare  for 
action  having  been  made  early  in  the 
evening.  As  his  anchor  dropped,  Nel- 
son exclaimed,  u  I  will  fight  them  the 
moment  I  have  a  fair  wind." 

On  the  following  morning,  at  half- 
past  nine,  the  signal  was  made  for  the 
ships  to  weigh  in  succession;  at  ten 
minutes  after  ten  the  action  commenc- 
ed, at  the  distance  of  about  half  a  ca- 
ble length  from  the  enemy ;  and  by 
half-past  eleven  the  battle  became  gen- 
eral. The  plan  of  attack  had  been  com- 
plete; but  seldom  had  any  project  of 
the  kind  been  disconcerted  by  more 
untoward  accidents.  Three  of  the 
ships  had  grounded,  and  only  one  gun- 
brig  and  two  bomb-vessels  could  be 
got  fairly  into  action.  Nelson's  agita- 
tion was  extreme  when  he  found  him- 
self, before  the  action  began,  deprived 
of  a  fourth  part  of  his  force ;  but  no 
sooner  was  he  in  action  than  the  wild 
music  of  the  fight  seemed  to  drive 
away  all  anxious  thoughts ;  his  coun- 
tenance brightened,  and  his  conversa- 
tion became  joyous,  animated,  and  de- 
lightful. At  one  o'clock  the  enemy's 
fire  continued  unslackened ;  and  the 
commander-in-chief,  despairing  of  suc- 
cess, made  the  signal  for  discontinuing 


the  action.  At  this  moment,  whilst  Nel- 
son was  pacing  the  quarter-deck  in  all 
the  excitement  of  battle,  a  shot,  passing 
through  the  main-mast,  knocked  the 
splinters  about.  "It  is  warm  work," 
said  he,  "  and  this  day  may  be  the  last 
to  any  of  us  at  a  moment ;  but,  mark 
you,"  he  added,  "  I  would  not  be  else- 
where for  thousands."  The  signal- 
lieutenant  now  called  out  that  the  sig 
nal  for  discontinuing  the  action  had 
been  thrown  out  by  the  commander- 
in-chief.  Nelson  continued  to  walk 
the  deck,  and  appeared  not  to  notice 
it.  At  the  next  turn,  the  lieutenant 
asked  if  he  should  repeat  the  signal. 
"  No,"  replied  Nelson ;  "  acknowledge 
it."  He  then  called  to  know  if  the 
signal  for  close  action  was  still  hoist- 
ed ;  and  being  answered  in  the  affirm- 
ative, said,  "  Mind  you  keep  it  so." 
A  little  after,  "  I  have  a  right  to  be 
blind  sometimes,  Foley,"  added  he,  ad- 
dressing the  captain ;  then  putting  the 
glass  to  his  blind  eye,  in  a  mood  of  sport- 
ive bitterness,  which  gives  an  inexpress- 
ible interest  to  the  scene,  "I  really 
do  not  see  the  signal,"  he  exclaimed ; 
and  after  a  pause,  "  Keep  mine  for 
closer  battle  flying ;  that's  the  way  I 
answer  such  signals ;  nail  mine  to  the 
mast." 

Between  one  and  two  o'clock,  how- 
ever, the  fire  of  the  Danes  slacken- 
ed :  by  half -past  two  the  action  had 
ceased,  except  with  the  Crown  batter- 
ries,  and  one  or  two  ships  which  had 
renewed  their  fire,  though  with  but 
little  effect.  At  this  critical  moment, 
Nelson,  with  his  accustomed  presence 
of  mind,  resolved  to  secure  the  advan- 
tage he  had  gained,  and  to  open  a  ne- 
gotiation. He  retired  into  the  stero 


390 


HORATIO  NELSON. 


gallery,  and  wrote  to  tlie  Crown  Prince 
thus  :  "  Vice- Admiral  Lord  Nelson  has 
been  commanded  to  spare  Denmark 
when  she  no  longer  resists.  The  line 
of  defence  which  covered  her  shores  has 
struck  to  the  British  flag; — but  if  the 
firing  is  continued  on  the  part  of  Den- 
mark, he  must  set  on  fire  all  the  prizes 
he  has  taken,  without  having  the  pow- 
er of  saving  the  men  who  have  so  nobly 
defended  them.  The  brave  Danes  are 
the  brothers,  and  should  never  be  the 
enemies  of  the  English."  This,  after 
an  interchange  of  communications,  led 
to  an  interview  between  Nelson  and 
the  Crown  Prince,  at  which  the  pre- 
liminaries of  negotiations  were  adjust- 
ed; and  a  treaty  was  at  length  con- 
cluded, by  which  the  northern  confed- 
eracy was  dissolved,  and  the  maritime 
superiority  of  Britain  unequivocally 
recognized.  For  the  battle  of  Copen- 
hagen, Nelson  was  raised  to  the  rank 
of  viscount,  and,  on  the  recall  of  Sir 
Hyde  Parker,  appointed  to  the  chief 
command  in  the  North  Sea. 

Having  settled  affairs  in  the  Baltic, 
Lord  Nelson  returned  in  a  frigate  to 
England.  But  he  had  not  been  many 
weeks  ashore  when  he  was  called  upon 
to  attack  the  flotilla  which  had  been 
prepared  at  Boulogne  for  the  threaten- 
ed invasion  of  England.  The  enemy 
were  fully  prepared,  however,  and 
though  nothing  could  exceed  the  gal- 
lantry with  which  they  were  assailed, 
the  enterprise  proved  unsuccessful.  He 
now  desired  to  be  relieved  from  this 
boat-service,  thinking  it  an  unsuitable 
employment  for  a  vice-admiral;  and 
his  wishes  were  speedily  gratified  by 
the  signature  of  the  preliminaries  of 
peace 


He  had  purchased  a  house  and  an 
estate  at  Merton  in  Surrey,  meaning 
to  pass  there,  the  remainder  of  his 
days,  in  the'  society  of  Sir  William 
and  Lady  Hamilton.  But  the  happi- 
ness which  he  had  promised  himself 
was  not  of  long  continuance.  Sir 
William  Hamilton  died  early  in  1803. 
A  few  weeks  subsequent  to  this  event 
the  war  was  renewed ;  and  the  day 
after  his  majesty's  message  to  parlia- 
ment, announcing  the  recommencement 
of  hostilities,  Lord  Nelson  departed  to 
assume  the  command  of  the  fleet  in  the 
Mediterranean. 

On  the  20th  of  May,  1803,  he  hoist- 
ed his  flag  on  board  the  Victory,  and 
having  taken  his  station  immediately 
off  Toulon,  he  there  waited  with  inces- 
sant watchfulness  for  the  coming  out  of 
the  enemy ;  yet  notwithstanding  all  his 
vigilance,  the  Toulon  fleet  put  to  sea 
on  the  18th  of  January,  1805,  and 
shortly  afterwards  formed  a  junction 
with  the  Spanish  squadron  at  Cadiz. 
Nelson  had  formed  his  own  judgment 
of  their  destination,  when  Donald 
Campbell,  then  an  admiral  in  the  Por- 
tuguese service,  went  on  board  the  Vic- 
tory, and  communicated  his  certain 
knowledge  that  the  combined  French 
arid  Spanish  fleets  were  bound  for  the 
West  Indies.  The  enemy  had  five  and 
thirty  days'  start ;  but  Nelson  calcula- 
ted that  he  should  gain  eight  or  ten 
days  by  his  exertions.  To  the  West 
Indies  therefore  he  bent  all  sail  with 
his  ten  ships,  in  eager  pursuit  of  eigh- 
teen, and  on  the  4th  of  June  reached 
Barbadoes,  whither  he  had  sent  dis- 
patches before  him.  Deceived  by  false 
intelligence,  he  then  stood  to  the  south- 
ward in  quest  of  the  enemy ;  but  ad 


HOKATIO  NELSON. 


vices  having  met  Mm  by  the  way  that 
the  combined  fleets  were  at  Martinique, 
he  immediately  sailed  for  that  island, 
where  he  arrived  on  the  9th,  and  re- 
ceived certain  intelligence  that  they 
had  passed  to  the  leeward  of  Antigua 
the  preceding  day,  and  taken  a  home- 
ward-bound convoy.  It  was  now  clear 
that  the  enemy,  having  accomplished 
the  object  of  their  cruise,  were  flying 
back  to  Europe ;  and  accordingly,  on 
the  13th,  he  steered  for  Europe  in  pur- 
suit of  them.  On  the  17th  July  he 
came  in  sight  of  Cape  St.  Vincent,  and 
directed  his  course  towards  Gibraltar, 
where  he  soon  afterwards  anchored, 
and  went  on  shore  for  the  first  time 
since  the  16th  of  June,  1803.  The 
combined  fleet  having  thus  eluded  his 
pursuit,  he  returned  almost  inconsola- 
ble to  England,  to  reinforce  the  Chan- 
nel fleet  with  his  squadron,  lest  the 
enemy  should  bear  down  upon  Brest 
with  their  whole  collected  force. 

Having  landed  at  Portsmouth,  Lord 
Nelson  at  length  received  news  of  the 
enemy's  fleet.  After  an  inconclusive 
action,  in  which  they  had  run  the 
gauntlet  through  Sir  Robert  Calder's 
squadron  on  the  22d  of  July,  about 
sixty  leagues  west  of  Cape  Finisterre, 
they  had  proceeded  to  Ferrol,  brought 
out  the  squadron  which  there  awaited 
their  arrival,  and  with  it  entered  Cadiz 
in  safety.  Upon  receiving  this  intel- 
ligence, Nelson  again  offered  his  ser- 
vices, which  were  willingly  accepted. 
The  Victory,  destined  once  more  to 
bear  his  flag,  was  refitted  with  incredi- 
ble dispatch ;  and  such  was  his  impa- 
tience to  be  at  the  scene  of  action,  that 
although  the  wind  proved  adverse,  he 
worked  down  the  Channel,  and,  after 


a  rough  passage,  arrived  off  Cadiz  on 
the  29th  of  September,  the  day  on 
which  the  French  admiral,  Villeneuve, 
had  received  peremptory  orders  to  put 
to  sea  the  very  first  opportunity.  Fear 
ing  that  the  enemy,  if  they  knew  hia 
force,  might  be  deterred  from  ventur- 
ing to  sea,  he  kept  out  of  sight  of  land ; 
desired  Collingwood  to  hoist  no  colors, 
and  fire  no  salute ;  and  wrote  to  Gib- 
raltar  to  request  that  the  force  of  the 
fleet  might  not  be  inserted  in  the  ga- 
zette published  there.  The  station 
which  he  chose  was  some  fifty  or  sixty 
miles  to  the  westward  of  Cadiz,  off 
Cape  St.  Mary's. 

On  the  9th  of  October,  Lord  Nelson 
communicated  to  Admiral  Collingwood 
his  plan  of  attack.  The  order  of  sailing 
was  to  be  the  order  of  battle.  His  ob- 
ject he  declared  to  be  close  and  decisive 
action.  "In  case  signals  cannot  be 
seen  or  clearly  understood,"  said  he, 
"no  captain  can  do  wrong  if  he  place 
his  ship  alongside  that  of  an  enemy." 
This  was  what  he  called  the  Nelson- 
touch.  It  was  a  mode  of  attack  equal- 
ly new  and  simple.  Every  one  com- 
prehended it  in  a  moment,  and  was 
convinced  that  it  would  succeed.  In 
fact  it  proved  irresistible. 

Villeneuve,  relying  upon  the  infor- 
mation he  had  received,  put  to  sea  on 
the  19th,  and  at  daybreak,  on  the  21st 
of  October,  1805,  the  combined  fleets 
were  distinctly  seen  from  the  deck  of 
the  Victory,  formed  in  a  close  line 
ahead,  about  twelve  miles  to  the  lee- 
ward, and  standing  to  the  southward, 
off  Cape  Trafalgar.  The  British  fleet 
consisted  of  twenty-seven  sail  of  the 
line  and  four  frigates;  the  enemy's 
fleet  of  thirty-three  sail  of  the  line  and 


392 


HOKATIO  NELSOK 


seven  frigates.  But  their  superiority 
was  greater  in  size  and  in  weight  of 
metal  than  in  numbers;  they  had 
4,000  troops  on  board;  and  the  best 
riflemen  who  could  be  procured,  many 
of  them  Tyrolese,  were  dispersed 
throughout  the  ships.  Soon  after 
daylight  Nelson  came  on  deck,  and 
the  signal  was  made  to  bear  down  on 

O 

the  enemy  in  two  lines,  upon  which 
the  fleet  set  all  sail ;  Collingwood,  in 
the  Royal  Sovereign,  leading  the  lee 
line  of  thirteen  "ships,  and  Nelson,  in 
the  Victory,  leading  the  weather  line 
of  fourteen.  Having  seen  that  all  was 
right,  he  retired  to  his  cabin,  and  wrote 
a  devout  prayer,  in  which,  after  be- 
seeching the  Almighty  to  grant  a  great 
and  glorious  victory,  he  committed  his 
life  to  the  God  of  Battles ;  and  in  an- 
other writing  which  he  annexed  in  the 
same  diary,  he  bequeathed  Lady  Ham- 
ilton as  a  legacy  to  his  king  and  coun- 
try, and  commended  to  the  public  be- 
nificence  his  adopted  daughter,  Hora- 
tia,  desiring  that  in  future  she  would 
use  the  name  of  Nelson  only.  Black- 
wood  went  on  board  the  Victory  about 
six,  and  found  him  in  good  spirits,  but 
very  calm,  and  with  none  of  that  ex- 
hilaration which  he  had  displayed  on 
entering  into  battle  at  Aboukir  and  at 
Copenhagen.  With  a  prophetic  antici- 
pation, he  seems  {o  have  looked  for 
death  with  almost  as  certain  a  convic- 
tion as  for  victory.  His  whole  atten- 
tion was  fixed  upon  the  enemy,  who 
now  formed  their  line  with  much  skill 
on  the  larboard  tack.  Then  appeared 
that  signal  —  Nelson's  last  signal  - 
which  will  be  remembered  as  long  as 
the  language  or  even  the  memory  of 
England  shall  endure  : — u  England  ex- 


pects every  man  to  do  his  duty."  It 
was  received  throughout  the  fleet  with 
a  responsive  burst  of  acclamation,  ren- 
dered sublime  by  the  spirit  which  it 
breathed,  and  the  determination  which 
it  expressed.  "  Now,"  said  Nelson,  "  I 
can  do  no  more.  We  must  trust  to 
the  great  disposer  of  all  events,  and 
the  justice  of  our  cause.  I  thank  God 
for  this  great  opportunity  of  doing  my 
duty." 

On  this  memorable  day  Nelson  wore, 
as  usual,  his  admiral's  frock-coat,  bear 
ing  upon  the  left  breast  the  various 
orders  with  which  he  had  at  different 
times  been  invested.  Decorations  which 
rendered  him  so  conspicuous  a  mark  to 
the  enemy  were  beheld  with  ominous 
apprehension  by  his  officers,  especially 
as  it  was  known  that  there  were  riflemen 
on  board  the  French  ships,  and  it  could 
not  be  doubted  that  his  life  would  be 
particularly  aimed  at.  This  was  a  point, 
however,  on  which  it  was  hopeless  to 
reason  or  remonstrate  with  him.  "  In 
honor  I  gained  them,"  said  he,  when 
allusion  was  made  to  the  insignia  he 
wore,  "and  in  honor  I  will  die  with 
them."  Nevertheless,  Captain  Black- 
wood,  and  his  own  captain,  Hardy, 
having  represented  to  him  how  ad- 
vantageous it  would  be  to  the  fleet 
were  he  to  keep  out  of  action  as  long 
as  possible,  he  consented  that  the  Tern- 
eraire  and  the  Leviathan,  which  were 
sailing  abreast  of  the  Victory  should 
be  ordered  to  pass  ahead.  But  the 
order  was  unavailing ;  for  these  ships 
could  not  pass  ahead  if  the  Victory 
continued  to  carry  all  her  sail ;  yet,  so 
far  from  shortening  sail,  Nelson  took 
an  evident  pleasure  in  pressing  on.  and 
rendering  it  impossible  for  them,  to 


HORATIO  NELSON. 


393 


obey  his  own  order.  As  the  enemy 
showed  no  colors  till  late  in  the  action, 
the  Santissima  Trinidad  was  distin- 
guishable only  by  her  four  decks ;  and 
to  the  bow  of  his  old  opponent  in  the 
action  off  Cape  St.  Vincent  he  ordered 
the  Victory  to  be  steered.  In  the 
meantime,  an  incessant  raking  fire  was 
kept  up  on  the  Victory;  and  as  the 
ship  approached,  Nelson  remarked, 
"  This  is  too  warm  work  to  last  long." 
She  had  not  yet  returned  a  single  gun, 
though  by  this  time  fifty  of  her  men 
had  been  killed  or  wounded,  and  her 
main-top-mast,  with  all  her  studding- 
sails  and  booms,  shot  away.  A  few 
minutes  after  twelve,  however,  she 
opened  her  fire  from  both  sides  of  her 
deck,  and  soon  afterwards  ran  on  board 
the  Redoubtable,  just  as  her  tiller  ropes 
were  shot  away.  Captain  Harvey,  in 
the  Temeraire,  fell  on  board  the  Re- 
doubtable on  the  other  side ;  and  an- 
other enemy's  ship,  the  Fougueux,  fell 
on  board  the  Temeraire ;  so  that  these 
four  ships  formed  as  compact  a  tier  as 
if  they  had  been  moored  together,  their 
heads  lying  all  the  same  way.  The 
lieutenants  of  the  Victory  now  de- 
pressed their  guns,  and  fired  with  a 
diminished  charge,  lest  the  shot  should 
pass  through  and  injure  the  Temeraire ; 
and  as  there  was  danger  that  the 
Redoubtable  might  take  fire  from 
the  lower-deck  guns,  the  muzzles 
of  which  when  run  out,  touched 
her  sides,  the  fireman  of  each  gun 
stood  ready  with  a  bucket  of  water, 
which,  as  soon  as  the  gun  had  been 
discharged,  he  dashed  into  the  hole 
made  by  the  shot.  In  this  situation, 
the  Victory  kept  up  an  incessant  fire 
from  both  sides,  directing  her  larboard 
50 


guns  on  the  Bucentaur  and  Santissima 
Trinidad. 

But  Nelson's  hour  was  now  come. 
It  had  been  part  of  his  prayer  that  the 
British  fleet  might  be  as  distinguished 
for  humanity  in  victory  as  for  bravery 
in  battle.  Setting  an  example  himself 
he  twice  gave  orders  to  cease  firing 
upon  the  Redoubtable,  supposing  she 
had  struck,  because  her  great  guns 
were  silent ;  for  as  she  carried  no  flag, 

7  O7 

it  was  impossible  instantly  to  ascertain 
the  fact.  From  the  ship  which  he  had 
thus  twice  spared  he  received  his  death- 
wound.  In  the  heat  of  the  action, 
about  a  quarter  after  one  o'clock,  a 
musket-ball  from  the  mizen-top  of  the 
Redoubtable  struck  the  epaulette  on 
his  left  shoulder ;  and  he  fell  upon  his 
face  on  the  spot  covered  with  the  blood 
of  his  secretary,  Mr.  Scott,  who  had 
been  killed  a  short  time  befora  "  They 
have  done  for  me  at  last,  Hardy,"  "said 
he,  as  a  Serjeant  of  marines  and  two 
seamen  raised  him  from  the  deck.  "  I 
hope  not,"  replied  Captain  Hardy. 
"Yes,"  he  rejoined;  "my  back-bone  is 
shot  through."  But,  though  mortally 
wounded,  he  did  not  for  a  moment 
lose  that  presence  of  mind  for  which 
he  was  ever  distinguished.  As  they 
were  carrying  him  down  the  ladder  to 
the  cockpit,  he  observed  that  the  tiller 
ropes,  which  had  been  shot  away  early 
in  the  action,  were  not  yet  replaced, 
and  ordered  that  new  ones  should  be 
immediately  rove.  He  was  laid  upon 
a  pallet  in  the  midshipman's  berth, 
and  the  surgeon  being  called  it  was 
soon  perceived  that  the  wound  he  had 
received  would  speedily  prove  mortal ; 
but  this  was  concealed  from  all  except 
Captain  Hardy,  the  chaplain,  and  the 


394 


HOKATIO  NELSOX. 


medical  attendants.  Being  certain, 
however,  from  the  sensation  which  he 
felt  in  his  back,  and  the  gush  of  blood 
within  his  breast,  that  no  human  aid 
could  avail  him,  he  insisted  that  the 
surgeon  should  leave  him,  and  attend 

O  ' 

to  those  to  whom  he  might  be  useful. 
"  You  can  do  nothing  for  me,"  said  he. 
Suffering  from  intense  thirst,  and  in 
great  pain,  he  expressed  much  anxi- 
ety as  to  the  fate  of  the  action ;  and 
his  countenance  brightened  with  a 
gleam  of  joy  as  often  as  the  hurrah  of 
the  crew  of  the  Victory  announced  that 
an  enemy's  ship  had  struck. 

At  length  he  became  very  impatient 
to  see  Captain  Hardy,  whom  he  re- 
peatedly sent  for;  but  that  officer 
could  not  leave  the  deck,  and  upwards 
of  an  hour  elapsed  before  he  could  quit 
his  station.  When  they  met  they 
shook  hands  in  silence,  Hardy  strug- 
gling to  suppress  his  emotions.  "  Well, 
Hardy,"  said  Nelson, "  how  goes  the  day 
with  us  ? "  "  Very  well,"  replied  the 
captain;  "ten  ships  have  struck,  but 
five  of  the  enemy's  van  have  tacked, 
and  show  an  intention  of  bearing  down 
on  the  Victory.  I  have  called  two  or 
three  of  our  fresh  ships  around  and 
have  no  doubt  of  giving  them  a  drub- 
bing." "  I  hope  "  said  Nelson,  "  none 
:>f  our  ships  have  struck."  "  There  is 
no  fear  of  that "  answered  Hardy ;  upon 
which  the  dying  hero  said,  "  I  am  a 
dead  man:  I  am  going  fast;  it  will 
soon  be  all  over  with  me ;  my  back 
is  shot  through."  Hardy,  unable  any 
longer  to  suppress  his  feelings,  hastened 
upon  deck ;  but  in  some  fifty  minutes 
returned,  and  taking  the  hand  of  his 
dying  commander,  congratulated  him 
on  having  gained  a  complete  victory. 


He  'did  not  know  how  many  of  the 
enemy  had  struck,  as  it  was  impossible 
to  perceive  them  distinctly;  but  four 
teen  or  fifteen  at  least  had  surrendered. 
"  That's  well,"  answered  Nelson ;  "  but 
I  had  bargained  for  twenty."  Then, 
in  a  stronger  voice,  he  said,  "Anchor, 
Hardy,  anchor ; "  and  again,  most  ear- 
nestly, "Do  you  anchor."  Next  to 
his  country,  Lady  Hamilton  occupied 
his  thoughts.  "  Take  care  of  my  dear 
Lady  Hamilton,  Hardy ;  take  care  of 
poor  Lady  Hamilton ; "  and  a  few 
minutes  before  he  expired,  he  said  to 
the  chaplain,  "  Remember  that  I  leave 
Lady  Hamilton  and  my  daughter  Ho- 
ratia  as  a  legacy  to  my  country."  The 
last  words  he  was  heard  to  utter  dis- 
tinctly were,  "I  thank  God,  I  have 
done  my  duty."  He  expired  at  half- 
past  four  o'clock,  three  hours  and  a 
quarter  after  he  had  received  his  fatal 
wound. 

The  total  loss  of  the  British  in  the 
battle  of  Trafalgar  amounted  to  1587. 
Twenty  of  the  enemy  struck,  and  of 
the  ships  which  escaped,  four  were 
afterwards  taken  by  Sir  Richard  Stra- 
han.  But  unhappily  the  fleet  did  not 
anchor,  as  Lord  Nelson  with  his  dying 
breath  had  enjoined;  a  heavy  gale 
came  on  from  the  S.  W.;  some  of  the 
prizes  went  down,  some  were  driven 
on  the  shore,  one  effected  its  escape 
into  Cadiz,  others  were  destroyed,  and 
four  only  were  by  the  greatest  exer- 
tions, saved.  Still,  by  this  mighty 
achievement,  the  navies  of  France  and 
Spain  received  a  blow  from  which  they 
were  not  destined  soon  to  recover; 
the  gigantic  combinations  of  Napoleon 
with  a  view  to  a  descent  upon  England 
were  completely  baffled ;  and  the  sue- 


HOEATIO  NELSON. 


39ft 


cess  of  his  campaign  of  Austerlitz 
was  in  a  great  measure  neutralized. 
The  remains  of  Lord  Nelson  were 
buried  at  St.  Paul's  on  the  9th  of 
January,  1806.  It  is  needless  to 
add,  that  all  the  honors  which  a 
grateful  country  could  "bestow  were 
heaped  on  the  memory  of  the  man 
who  had  achieved  this  unequalled 
victory. 

Lord  Nelson's  brother,  the  Rev. 
William  Nelson,  D.  D.,  was  created 
Earl  Nelson  of  Trafalgar  and  of  Merton 
on  the  20th  November,  1805,  with  an 
annual  grant  of  £6000,  and  with  per- 
mission from  his  majesty  to  inherit  his 
deceased  brother's  Sicilian  dukedom 
of  Bronte.  Besides  £100,000  for  the 
purchase  of  an  estate,  £10,000  were 
voted  to  each  of  the  hero's  sisters. 
His  dying  request  in  behalf  of  Lady 


Hamilton  and  his  "  adopted  daughter 
Horatia  Nelson  Thompson,"  the  Brit- 
ish nation  saw  fit  to  utterly  disregard. 
The  one  he  left,  in  a  codicil  to  his  will 
written  a  few  hours  before  his  fall,  "  a 
legacy  to  my  king  and  country ;"  and 
the  other  "to  the  beneficence  of  my 
country."  "These"  continues  the 
document,  "  are  the  only  favors  I  ask 
of  my  king  and  country  at  this  mo 
ment,  when  I  am  going  to  fight  their 
battle ;"  yet  this  codicil  was  virtuously 
concealed  by  the  hero's  reverend  bro- 
ther until  the  parliamentary  grant  to 
himself  was  duly  completed.  Lady 
Hamilton  died  at  Calais  in  extreme 
poverty  and  great  distress  on  the  6th 
January,  1814.  Nelson's  daughter 
Horatia,  was  married  in  February,! 8 2 2, 
to  the  Rev.  Philip  Ward,  an  English 
clergyman. 


JOHN     PHILPOT    CURRAN 


JOHN  PHILPOT  CURRAN,  the 
t-J  wittiest  and  most  eloquent  lawyer 
of  his  day,  was  born  at  Newmarket,  a 
small  village  of  the  county  of  Cork, 
Ireland,  on  the  24th  of  July,  1750. 
He  was  thus  four  years  younger  than 
his  great  associate  in  fame,  Henry  Grat- 
tan.  Much  has  been  said  about  his 
humble  origin;  but  his  ancestry  was 
respectable,  and  though  he  rose  in  life 
by  the  exertion  of  his  own  talents  with 
little  aid  from  fortune,  he  can  hardly 
be  classed  with  those  who  have  had  to 
contend  in  the  pursuit  of  knowledge 
with  extraordinary  difficulties.  His 
father,  James  Curran,  descended,  we 
are  told,  from  one  of  the  soldiers  who 
came  over  from  England  to  assist  in 
the  ruthless  subjugation  of  Ireland,  in 
Cromwell's  army,  held  the  position  of 
seneschal  of  a  manor  court  at  Newcastle 
and  possessed  some  acquirements  above 
his  station,  having  some  acquaintance 
with  the  Greek  and  Roman  classics. 
Phillips  in  his  animated  work  on  "  Cur- 
ran  and  his  Contemporaries"  speaks 
rather  slightingly  of  these  attainments, 
saying  that  "  Old  James  Curran's  ed- 
ucation was  pretty  much  in  the  ratio 
of  his  income,"  which,  he  tells  us,  "  be- 
sides the  paltry  revenue  of  his  office, 

(396) 


was  very  moderate."  All  parties  agree, 
however,  in  their  tributes  to  the  bright 
intellectual  qualities  of  the  mother, 
which  conquered  all  defects  of  educa- 
tion. This  lady,  whose  niaiden  name 
was  Philpot,  belonged  to  a  respectable 
family  and  was  noted  for  the  impres- 
sion made  by  her  character  upon  those 
about  her.  She  was  witty,  humorous, 
renowned  in  her  neighborhood  for  her 
good  stock  of  legendary  lore.  "  The  only 
inheritance,"  Curran  would  say  in  after 
life, "  that  I  could  boast  of  from  my  poor 
father,  was  the  very  scanty  one  of  an 
unattractive  face  and  person  like  his 
own ;  and  if  the  world  has  ever  attrib- 
uted to  me  something  more  valuable 
than  face  or  person,  or  than  earthly 
wealth,  it  was  that  another  and  a 
dearer  parent  gave  her  child  a  portion 
from  the  treasure  of  her  own  mind."* 
She  lived  to  witness  her  son's  succes? 
at  the  bar,  and,  when  she  died  about 
the  year  1783  at  the  age  of  eighty,  her 
son  recorded  his  sense  of  his  obligations 
to  her  in  this  monumental  inscription, 
"  Here  lies  the  body  of  Sarah  Curran. 
She  was  marked  by  many  years,  many 
talents,  many  virtues,  few  failings,  no 

*  Life  of  Curran,  by  his  son,  William  Henrj 
Curran. 


Johnson  "Wilson.  <k  Co-.Pu.biish.ere.Nowl'erk. 


JOHN  PHILPOT  CUKRAST. 


39' 


crime.  This  frail  memorial  was  placed 
here  Iby  a  son  whom  she  loved." 

The  young  Curran  was  fortunate  in 
finding  an  appreciator  of  his  boyish 
talents  in  the  resident  clergyman  at 
Newcastle,  the  Rev.  Nathaniel  Boyse, 
who  had  such  regard  for  his  parents, 
and  who  was  so  pleased  with  the  child 
that  he  took  him  into  his  own  house  and 
personally  instructed  him  in  the  r"»di- 
ments  of  a  classical  education.  With 
this  encouragement  of  his  powers,  the 
boy,  with  the  further  assistance  of  a 
pecuniary  grant  from  his  benefactor, 
was  sent  to  the  school  at  Middleton, 
where  he  was  prepared  for  admission 
to  Trinity  College,  Dublin.  Curran 
never  forgot  his  obligation  to  Boyse. 

tf 

In  his  social  hours  he  used  to  relate, 
with  his  mingled  humor  and  feeling,  to 
his  biographer  Phillips,  how  the  kind 
clergyman  had  one  day  found  him,  a 
light-hearted,  waggish  boy,  playing  in 
the  village  ball-alley,  and  in  pursuit  of 
his  benevolent  intentions  had  seduced 
him  to  his  home  by  a  gift  of  sweet- 
meats, and  in  due  time  sent  him  forth 
on  the  high  road  to  learning,  having 
made  a  man  of  him.  "  I  recollect," 
said  Curran,"  "it  was  about  five-and- 
thirty  years  afterwards,  when  I  had 
risen  to  some  eminence  at  the  bar,  and 
when  I  had  a  seat  in  parliament,  and 
a  good  house  in  Ely  Place,  on  my  re- 
turn one  day  from  court  I  found  an 
old  gentleman  seated  alone  in  the  draw- 
ing-room, his  feet  familiarly  placed  on 
each  side  of  the  Italian  marble  chimney- 
piece,  and  his  whole  air  bespeaking 
the  conciousness  of  one  quite  at  home. 
He  turned  round — it  was  my  friend  of 
the  ball-alley !  I  rushed  instinctively 
into  his  arms.  I  could  not  help  burst- 


ing into  tears.  Words  cannot  describe 
the  scene  which  followed.  'You  are 
right,  sir;  you  are  right;  the  chim- 
ney-piece is  yours — the  pictures  are 
yours — the  house  is  yours;  you  gave 
me  all  I  have — my  friend — my  father  !' 
He  dined  with  me ;  and  in  the  evening 
I  caught  the  tear  glistening  in  his  fine 
blue  eye  when  he  saw  his  poor  little 
Jacky,  the  creature  of  his  bounty,  ris- 
ing in  the  House  of  Commons  to  reply 
to  a  right  honorable.  Poor  Boyse !  he 
is  now  gone ;  and  no  suitor  had  a  lar- 
ger deposit  of  practical  benevolence  in 
the  court  above.  This  is  his  wine — • 
let  us  drink  to  his  memory."  Curran 
entered  Trinity  College,  Dublin,  as  a 
sizer  in  1769.  He  was  now,  at  the  age 
of  nineteen,  a  lively  imaginative  youth, 
with  wit  apparently  at  will,  or  rather 
an  instinctive  faculty  with  him,  turn- 
ing to  ready  account  the  felicities  of 
Horace,  already  a  favorite  author,  and 
to  be  cherished  with  Virgil  as  the  com- 
panion of  his  life.  He  became  cele- 
brated in  his  professional  career  for 
his  ready  humorous  application  of 
verses  from  the  classic  poets,  which 
was  highly  valued  as  an  accomplish- 
ment in  his  day  in  the  courts  and  in 
parliament. 

When  Curran  entered  college  it 
was  with  the  expectation,  at  least  on 
the  part  of  his  family  and  friends,  that 
he  would  one  day  take  orders  in  the 
church.  There  was  a  prospect  of  a 
small  living  in  the  gift  of  a  distant 
relative;  and  the  idea,  at  the  outset, 
seems  to  have  had  some  encouragement 
from  his  tastes  and  disposition.  It 
was  soon,  however,  dissipated,  much  to 
the  regret  of  his  mother,  who,  witness- 
ing the  effect  of  his  eloquence  at  the 


4-00 


JOHN   PHILPOT  CCJKRAX. 


to  their  absurdity,  by  considering  that 
they  are  happy  at  so  small  an  expense 
as  being  ridiculous ;  and  they  certainly 
receive  more  pleasure  from  the  power 
of  abusing,  than  they  would  from  the 
reformation  of  what  they  condemn.  I 
take  the  same  satisfaction  in  this  kind 
of  company,  as,  while  it  diverts  me,  it 
has  the  additional  recommendation  of 
reconciling  economy  with  amusement." 
Economy,  indeed,  was  an  important 
consideration  with  our  young  adven- 
turer. On  one  occasion,  when  from 
lack  of  an  endorsement  a  bill  of  ex- 
change drawn  upon  a  London  bank- 
ing house  proved  not  negotiable,  leav- 
ing him  sadly  in  need  of  the  remittance, 
he  turned  into  St.  James'  Park  to  the 
traditional  dinner  with  Duke  Humph- 
rey. Seating  himself  upon  one  of  the 
benches  he  consoled  himself  with  whist- 
ling a  melancholy  old  Irish  air,  which 
attracted  the  attention  of  a  person  at 
the  other  end.  "Pray,  sir,"  said  the 
stranger — we  give  the  story  as  it  is 
related  by  Curran's  son — "  may  I  ven- 
ture to  ask  where  you  learned  that 
tune?"  "Indeed,  sir,"  replied  the 
whistler,  in  the  meek  and  courteous 
tone  of  a  spirit  which  affliction  had 
softened,  "indeed  you  may,  sir;  I 
learned  it  in  my  native  country,  in  Ire- 
land." "  But  how  comes  it,  sir,  that  at 
"this  hour,  while  other  people  are  dining, 
you  continue  here,  whistling  old  Irish 
airs  ?  "  "  Alas !  sir,  I  too  have  been  in 
the  habit  of  dining  of  late,  but  to-day, 
my  money  being  all  gone,  and  my 
credit  not  yet  arrived,  I  am  even 
forced  to  come  and  dine  upon  a  whistle 
in  the  park."  Struck  by  the  mingled 
playfulness  and  despondence  of  this 
confession,  the  benevolent  veteran  ex- 


claimed :  "  Courage,  young  man !  I 
think  I  can  see  that  you  deserve  better 
fare;  come  along  with  me,  and  you 
shall  have  it."  This  sympathizing 
stranger  proved  no  less  a  person  than 
the  eminent  actor,  Macklin ;  and  some 
time  after  when  the  tragedian  came  to 
Dublin,  when  his  dinnerless  acquaint- 
ance had  risen  to  eminence  in  politics 
and  at  the  bar,  the  circumstance  be- 
came the  occasion  of  a  very  pleasant 
renewal  of  the  acquaintance  of  the  two 
parties.  Macklin  did  not  recognize 
Curran  till  he  prepared  the  way  by  a 
circumstantial  account  of  the  scene, 
relating  it  as  an  instance  of  the  regard 
Irishmen  have  for  one  another.  This 
brought  the  occurrence  to  the  actor's 
recollection.  "  If  my  memory  fails  me 
not,"  he  said,  "  we  have  met  before." 
"Yes,  Mr.  Macklin,"  replied  Curran, 
taking  his  hand, "  indeed  we  have  met ; 
and,  though  upon  that  occasion  you 
were  only  performing  upon  a  private 
theatre,  let  me  assure  you  that — to 
adopt  the  words  of  a  high  judicial  per- 
sonage, which  you  have  heard  before — 
you  never  acted  better."  The  allusion 
was  to  a  compliment  in  those  words 
addressed  by  Lord  Mansfield  from  the 
bench  to  Macklin  in  reference  to  his 
liberal  conduct  in  a  cause  under  adju 
dication.  Macklin  was  the  only  ac- 
quaintance Curran  made  of  the  emi- 
nent men  of  the  time  during  his  terms 
at  the  Temple.  He  saw  Goldsmith 
once  at  a  coffee-house.  Grarrick,  of 
course,  was  visible  to  him  at  the  the- 
atre, and  made  a  great  impression  upon 
him,  as  did  Mansfield  presiding  in 
court. 

He  was  meanwhile  not  only  a  dili- 
gent reader  in  private,  but  sought  op- 


JOHN  FHILPOT  CUREAK. 


401 


portunities  in  debating  clubs  to  fami- 
liarize himself  with  oratorical  expres- 
sion. At  first  his  habit  of  stammering 
appeared  so  irremediable  that  his  friend 
Apjohn  advised  him  to  prepare  him- 
self by  study  for  the  duties  of  chamber 
counsel  exclusively,  as  nature  had  never 
intended  him  for  an  orator.  But  he 
resolutely  persisted  in  his  attempts  at 
speaking,  till  one  day  his  genius  was 
fully  roused  by  some  contemptuous 
opposition,  and  the  precipitation  and 
confusion  of  speech  which  had  gained 
him  from  his  schoolfellows  the  appel- 
lation of  "  Stuttering  Jack  Curran," 
was  clarified  and  concentrated  in  that 
bold,  impetuous  flow  of  eloquence, 
which  was  for  the  succeeding  genera- 
tion to  charm  senates  and  popular  as- 
semblies. He  now  lost  no  time  in  per- 
fecting himself,  by  assiduous  attend- 
ance at  the  Robin  Hood  and  other  de- 
bating clubs,  in  skill  and  readiness  in 
discussion,  thus  making  himself  a  mas- 
ter of  all  the  exigencies  of  extempore 
speaking ;  preparing  himself  adequate- 
ly beforehand,  and  trusting  to  the  oc- 
casion for  expression.  During  his  resi- 
dence in  London,  before  his  studies 
were  completed,  he  thought  of  emigra- 
ting to  America  to  try  his  fortune  at 
the  bar  in  this  country ;  but  this  de- 
sign he  soon  abandoned. 

In  17^5  he  was  called  to  the  Irish 
bar;  and,  assisted  by  the  moderate 
marriage  portion  of  Miss  Creagh,  of 
the  county  of  Cork,  to  whom  he  had 
been  united  the  year  before,  was  en- 
abled with  the  fees  which  he  derived 
from  his  profession  to  lead  an  inde- 
pendent life  in  pecuniary  matters  from 
the  beginning.  His  success  as  an  ad- 
vocate was  steady  in  its  progress,  his 
51 


note-book  recording  the  receipt  of 
eighty-two  guineas  in  retainers  the  first 
year,  between  one  and  two  hundred  the 
second,  and  so  on  in  proportion.  Not- 
withstanding his  practice  in  the  deba- 
ting clubs,  he  was  so  overcome  with 
agitation  on  his  first  appearance  in  the 
Court  of  Chancery,  that  he  was  unable 
to  read  a  sentence  from  the  brief  which 
he  held,  and  a  friend  by  his  side  did 
this  office  for  him.  He,  however,  soon 
became  distinguished  by  his  boldness 
and  the  readiness  and  fertility  of  his 
illustrations,  his  high  spirit,  easily  pro- 
voked, calling  forth  all  his  powers 
when  he  was  met  by  opposition. 
Pleading  one  day  before  Judge  Robin- 
son, he  remarked,  "  that  he  had  never 
met  the  law  as  laid  down  by  his  lord- 
ship in  any  book  in  Jiis  library." 
"  That  may  be,  sir,"  said  the  judge  in 
a  contemptuous  tone,  "  but  I  suspect 
that  your  library  is  very  small."  The 
judge  being  the  author  of  several 
anonymous  pamphlets,  remarkable  for 
their  party  spirit  and  despotic  violence, 
Curran  instantly  retorted,  admitting 
that  his  library  might  be  small,  but 
professing  his  thankfulness  to  heaven 
that  it  contained  none  of  the  wretched 
productions  of  the  frantic  pamph- 
leteers of  the  day.  "  I  find  it  more  in- 
structive, my  lord,"  said  he,  "  to  study 
good  books  than  to  compose  bad  ones ; 
my  books  may  be  few,  but  the  title- 
pages  give  me  the  writers'  names ;  my 
shelf  is  not  disgraced  by  any  of  such 
rank  absurdity  that  their  very  authors 
are  ashamed  to  own  them."  He  was  here 
interrupted  by  the  judge,  who  said, 
"  Sir,  you  are  forgetting  the  respect 
which  you  owe  to  the  dignity  of  the 
judicial  character."  "Dignity!"  ex 


402 


PHILPOT  CUKRAN. 


claimed  Curran ;  "  my  lord,  upon  that 
point  I  shall  cite  you  a  case  from  a 
book  of  some  authority,  with  which 
you  are  perhaps  not  unacquainted." 
The  book  was  Smollett's  "Eoderick 
Random,"  and  the  story  which  he  pro- 
ceeded to  relate  was  an  adventure  of 
Strap.  "  A  poor  Scotchman,  upon  his 
arrival  in  London,  thinking  himself 
insulted  by  a  stranger,  and  imagining 
that  he  was  the  stronger  man,  resolved 
to  resent  the  affront,  and  taking  off 
his  coat,  delivered  it  to  a  by-stander  to 
hold;  but  having  lost  the  battle,  he 
turned  to  resume  his  garment,  when  he 
discovered  that  he  had  unfortunately 
lost  that  also,  that  the  trustee  of  his 
habiliment  had  decamped  during  the 
affray.  So,  my  lord,  when  the  person 
who  is  invested  with  the  dignity  of 
the  judgment-seat  lays  it  aside,  for  a 
moment,  to  enter  into  a  disgraceful 
personal  contest,  it  is  vain,  when  he 
has  been  worsted  in  the  encounter, 
that  he  seeks  to  resume  it — it  is  in 
vain  that  he  endeavors  to  shelter  him- 
self from  behind  an  authority  which 
he  has  abandoned."  To  which  the 
judge  answered,  "If  you  say  another 
word,  sir,  I'll  commit  you,"  and  Cur- 
ran,  closing  in  triumph,  responded, 
"Then,  my  lord,  it  will  be  the  best 
thing  you'll  have  committed  this  term." 
A  scene  like  this  might  not  have 
gained  a  young  barrister  much  credit 
in  the  English  courts,  but  in  Ireland, 
where  greater  latitude  was  allowed,  and 
the  conflict  of  partisan  warfare  was 
more  intense,  it  was  much  to  his  ad- 
vantage. Curran's  wit  and  intrepidi- 
ty began  now  to  be  generally  recog- 
nized, and  a  cause,  which  he  undertook 
about  1780,  brought  hin:  into  still 


more  prominent  notice.  The  case  was 
one  to  call  out  much  popular  enthu- 
siasm for  the  advocate.  An  Irish  no 
bleman,  Lord  Doneraile,  instigated  by 
his  mistress,  committed  an  assault  on 
an  aged  Koman  Catholic  clergyman, 
who,  in  the  exercise  of  his  vocation, 
had  been  called  to  adminster  some 
religious  censure  upon  the  broth- 
er of  the  kept  lady.  The  clergyman, 
the  Rev.  Mr.  Neale,  brought  an  action 
against  the  nobleman,  whose  position 
in  the  county  of  Cork  was  so  strong 
that  an  advocate  who  would  under- 
take the  case  was  long  looked  for  by 
the  poor  clergyman  in  vain.  Curran? 
hearing  of  the  affair,  tendered  his  ser- 
vices to  the  priest,  and  pleaded  his 
cause  so  successfully,  that  a  verdict 
was  obtained  in  his  favor,  with  thirty 
guineas  damages.  No  printed  report 
of  the  trial  was  made,  but  if  we  may 
judge  of  the  spirit  of  Curran's  appeal 
by  the  severity  of  his  remarks  on  Mr. 
St.  Leger,  the  brother  of  Lord  Done- 
raile, who  had  been  present  at  the  as- 
sault, his  language  must  have  been 
sufficiently  energetic.  He  described 
that  gentleman,  who  had  lately  left  a 
regiment  which  had  been  ordered  on 
active  service,  as  "  a  renegado  soldier, 
a  drummed-out  dragoon,  who  wanted 
the  courage  to  meet  the  enemies  of  his 
country  in  battle,  but  had  the  heroism 
to  redeem  the  ignominy  of  his  flight 
from  danger  by  raising  his  arm  against 
an  aged  and  unoffending  minister  of 
religion,  who  had  just  risen  from  put- 
ting up  before  the  throne  of  God  a 
prayer  of  general  intercession,  in  which 
his  heartless  insulter  was  included." 
The  necessary  result  of  this  license  was 
a  challenge  from  the  military  man, 


JOKN"  PHILPOT  CURRAN. 


403 


which  Curran,  in  the  state  of  opinion 
in  Ireland  on  that  subject,  felt  that  he 
could  not  shelter  himself  behind  any 
professional  privilege  of  the  court-room 
to  decline.  He  met  his  antagonist,  re- 
ceived his  fire  without  inj  ury,  and  gal- 
lantly refused  to  return  it.  A  more 
solemn  and  interesting  scene,  as  related 
by  Mr.  Curran's  son,  soon  followed. 
"  The  poor  priest  was  shortly  after 
called  away  to  another  world.  When 
he  found  that  the  hour  of  death  was  at 
hand,  he  earnestly  requested  that  his 
counsel,  to  whom  he  had  something  of 
importance  to  communicate,  might  be 
brought  into  his  presence.  Mr.  Curran 
co™Dlied,  and  was  conducted  to  the 
bedside  of  his  expiring  client.  The 
humble  servant  of  God  had  neither 
gold  nor  silver  to  bestow,  but  what  he 
had,  and  what  with  him  was  above  all 
price,  he  gave — the  blessing  of  a  dying 
Christian  upon  him  who  had  employed 
his  talents,  and  risked  his  life,  in  re- 
dressing the  wrongs  of  the  minister  of 
a  proscribed  religion.  He  caused  him- 
self to  be  raised  for  the  last  time  from 
his  pillow,  and,  placing  his  hands  on 
the  head  of  his  young  advocate,  pro- 
nounced over  him  the  formal  benedic- 
tion of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church,  as 
the  reward  of  his  eloquence  and  intre- 
pidity. Mr.  Curran  had  also  the  sat- 
isfaction of  being  assured  by  the  lower 
orders  of  his  countrymen,  that  he  might 
now  fight  as  many  duels  as  he  pleased, 
without  apprehending  any  danger  to 
his  person— an  assurance  which  sub- 
sequently became  a  prophecy,  as  far  as 
the  event  could  render  it  one." 

Curran  became  a  member  of  the  Irish 
House  of  Commons  in  1783,  and  was, 
of  course,  immediately  enrolled  on  the 


opposition  side.  It  was  the  year  after 
the  consummation  of  the  great  act  of 
parliamentary  independence,  and  agi- 
tations were  rife  on  all  questions  of 
reform.  Curran  bore  his  part  in  them ; 
but  as  his  speeches  were  never  fully  re- 
ported, and  he  took  no  pains  for  theii 
preservation,  but  little  remains  to  add 
to  his  other  claims  to  reputation  that 
of  the  parliamentary  orator.  Compar- 
ed with  his  great  contemporary  so  dis- 
tinguished in  debate,  possessed  of  the 
wit,  he  lacked  the  concentration  and 
judgment,  the  philosophical  acumen 
and  senatorial  mind  of  Grattan.  His 
speech  on  the  Pension  List,  in  which 
he  advocated  retrenchment,  some  pas 
sages  of  which  are  given  by  his  biog- 
rapher, exhibits  his  trenchant  style 
and  the  easy  familiarity  of  his  illus- 
trations. 

A  passage  of  some  moment  in  Cui- 
ran's  parliamentary  career  was  his  con- 
test with  Fitzgibbon,  then  attorney- 
general  and  subsequently  Lord  Chan- 
cellor, better  know  perhaps  under  his 
later  title  of  Lord  Clare.  This  person- 
age seems  to  have  been  the  natural  an- 
tagonist of  Curran,  opposed  to  him  in 
temperament,  in  turn  of  mind  and  in 
social  manners,  and,  in  his  conservative 
predilections,  in  constant  conflict  with 
the  other's  somewhat  careless  affection 
for  the  revolutionary  agitators  of  the 
day.  The  characteristic  circumstances 
which  led  to  their  encounter  in  a  duel, 
the  culmination  in  Ireland  in  those 
days  of  most  antipathies,  happened  in 
this  way :  in  a  debate  on  the  Abuse 
of  Attachments  by  the  King's  Bench 
in  the  Irish  House  of  Commons  in 
1785,  as  Curran  rose  to  speak  against 
them,  perceiving  that  Mr,  Fitzgibbor 


404: 


JOHN  PHILPOT  CURRAN. 


had  fallen  asleep  in  Ms  seat,  he  thus 
commenced :  "  I  hope  I  may  say  a  few 
words  on  this  great  subject  without 
disturbing  the  sleep  of  any  right  hon- 
orable member,  and  yet,  perhaps,  I 
ought  rather  to  envy  than  to  blame 
the  tranquillity  of  the  right  honorable 
gentleman.  I  do  not  feel  myself  so 
happily  tempered  as  to  be  lulled  to  re- 
pose by  the  storms  that  shake  the  land. 
If  they  invite  rest  to  any,  that  rest 
ought  not  to  be  lavished  on  the  guilty 
spirit."  Provoked  by  these  expres- 
sions and  by  the  observations  which  fol- 
lowed, Fitzgibbon  replied  with  much 
personality,  among  other  things  calling 
him  a  "  puny  babbler."  Curran  retort- 
ed in  this  personal  thrust :  "  I  am  not 
a  man  whose  respect  in  person  and 
character  depends  upon  the  impor- 
tance of  his  office ;  I  ana  not  a  young 
man  who  thrusts  himself  into  the  fore- 
ground of  a  picture  which  ought  to  be 
occupied  by  a  better  figure ;  I  am  not 
one  who  replies  with  invective  when 
sinking  under  the  force  of  argument ; 
I  am  not  a  man  who  denies  the  neces- 
sity of  parliamentary  reform  at  the  time 
that  he  proves  its  expediency  by  revil- 
ing his  own  constituents,  the  parish 
clerk,  the  sexton  and  grave-digger;  and 
if  there  be  any  man  who  can  apply 
what  I  am  not  to  himself,  I  leave  him 
to  think  of  it  in  the  committee,  and  to 
contemplate  upon  it  when  he  goes 
home."  The  result  of  the  altercation 
was  a  duel,  in  which  the  parties  ex- 
changed shots  without  the  occasional 
reward  of  such  encounters,  a  better 
understanding  for  the  future.  Phillips, 
it  may  be  remarked  in  his  book  on  Cur- 
ran  and  his  Contemporaries,  gives  an- 
other version  of  this  duel,  making  it 


consequent   upon   a    different    parlia 
mentary  altercation. 

As  a  diversion  from  his  now  labor* 
ious  life,  Curran,  in  the  summer  oi 
1787,  paid  a  visit  to  France.  The  let- 
ters which  he  wrote  on  this  tour,  giv- 
en in  his  biography,  are  hardly  equal 
in  style  or  interest  to  those  in  which 
he  recorded  his  first  youthful  impres- 
sions of  England.  His  admiration  of 
what  he  saw  was  not  very  enthusiastic. 
He  liked  the  social  turn  of  the  people, 
and  did  not  fail  to  notice  some  of  the 
incongruities,  in  the  contrast  between 
outside  pretension  and  beggarly  home 
comforts,  which  marked  the  general 
condition  of  the  country  in  the  period 
preceding  the  Revolution.  But  even 
reformers  like  Curran  had  not  then 
learnt  the  tests  of  political  security  in 
the  welfare  of  the  masses,  and  he  took 
things  for  the  most  part  as  he  found 
them,  not  anticipating  the  coming 
storm. 

Returning  to  Curran's  career  at  the 
bar,  we  find  him  now  acquiring  his 
most  permanent  claim  to  distinction 
in  his  forensic  pleadings  following  the 
course  of  the  Revolutionary  efforts, 
culminating  in  the  Rebellion  of  1798, 
the  participators  in  which  so  often 
looked  to  him.  for  counsel  and  defence. 
The  precursor  of  these  more  serious 
state  trials  was  the  case  in  1794  of 
Archibald  Hamilton  Rowan,  Secretary 
to  the  Society  of  United  Irishmen  in 
Dublin,  who  was  prosecuted  for  utter 
ing  a  seditious  libel  in  publishing  an 
address  to  the  Volunteers  of  Ireland, 
then  disbanded,  inviting  them  to  re- 
sume their  arms  for  the  preservatior 
of  the  general  tranquillity.  A  bettei 
case  for  the  lasting  fame  of  the  advc 


JOHN"  PHILPOT  CUEEAK 


405 


.  eate  could  not  have  occurred.  Rowan 
was  in  every  respect  an  amiable  gen- 
tleman and  disinterested  patriot,  not  a 
man  given  to  revolutionary  extrava- 
gance, a  benefactor  of  Iris  species,  and 
as  it  happened,  though  convicted  of  the 
libel  on  insufficient  evidence,  neither 
its  author  nor  publisher. 

The  topics  discussed  in  this  speech 
of  Curran,  included  several  of  perma- 
nent interest,  among  them  the  liberty 
of  the  press,  the  national  representa- 
tion and  Catholic  emancipation.  The 
first  he  looked  at  by  the  light  of  its 
advantages,  comparing  the  insecurity 
of  despotism  with  the  security  of  free- 
dom. But  the  finest  passage  of  this 
oration  was  unquestionably  the  appeal 
of  the  speaker  to  the  spirit  of  the  com- 
mon law  of  England  on  the  subject  of 
"  Universal  Emancipation,"  one  of  the 
obnoxious  terms  in  the  alleged  libel- 
lous address.  "  I  speak,"  said  he,  "  in 
the  spirit  of  the  British  law,  which 
makes  liberty  commensurate  with,  and 
inseparable  from  British  soil — which 
proclaims  even  to  the  stranger  and  the 
sojourn er,  the  moment  he  sets  his  foot 
upon  British  earth,  that  the  ground 
on  which  he  treads  is  holy,  and  con- 
secrated by  the  genius  of  universal 
emancipation.  No  matter  in  what 
language  his  doom  may  have  been  pro- 
nounced— no  matter  what  complexion, 
incompatible  with  freedom,  an  Indian, 
or  an  African  sun  may  have  burned 
upon  him — no  matter  in  what  disas- 
trous battle  the  helm  of  his  liberty  may 
have  been  cloven  down  —  no  matter 
with  what  solemnities  he  may  have 
been  devoted  upon  the  altar  of  slavery 
— the  moment  he  touches  the  sacred 
soil  of  Britain,  the  altar  and  the  god 


sink  together  in  the  dust,  his  soul 
walks  abroad  in  its  own  majesty,  his 
body  swells  beyond  the  measure  of 
his  chains,  which  burst  from  around 
him,  and  he  stands  redeemed,  regene- 
rated, and  disenthralled  by  the  irre- 
sistible genius  of  universal  emancipa- 
tion." 

"When  Mr.  Curran,"  writes  hia 
friend,  Phillips,  "  terminated  this  mag- 
nificent exertion,  the  universal  shout 
of  the  audience  testified  its  enthusi- 
asm. He  used  to  relate  a  ludicrous 
incident  which  attended  his  departure 
from  court  after  the  trial.  His  path 
was  instantly  beset  by  the  populace, 
who  were  bent  on  chairing  him.  He 
implored — he  entreated — all  in  vain. 
At  length,  assuming  an  air  of  author- 
ity, he  addressed  those  nearest  to  him : 
'  I  desire,  gentlemen,  that  you  will  de- 
sist.' 1 1  laid  great  emphasis,'  says  Cur- 
ran, '  on  the  word  "  desist,"  and  put  on 
my  best  suit  of  dignity.  However, 
my  next  neighbor,  a  gigantic,  brawny 
chairman,  eyeing  me  with  a  somewhat 
contemptuous  affection  from  top  to 
toe,  bellowed  out  to  his  companion, 
"Arrah,  blood  and  turf!  Pat,  don't 
mind  the  little  crature;  here,  pitch 
him  up  this  minute  upon  my  shoulder" 
Pat  did  as  he  was  desired ;  "  the  little 
crature  "  was  carried,  nolens  volens>  to 
his  carriage  and  drawn  home  by  an 
applauding  populace.'  It  was  a  great 
treat  to  hear  Curran  describe  this 
scene,  and  act  it" 

Various  state  trials  followed,  in 
which  Curran  appeared  for  the  defend- 
ants, in  vain  exerting  his  eloquence 
to  repel  the  system  of  information  and 
the  strong  tide  of  severity  which  waa 
setting  in,  in  the  prosecutions  of  the 


406 


JOHN  PHILPOT  CURRAtf. 


dominant  party.  On  the  trial  of  the 
Rev.  William  Jackson,  a  clergyman  of 
the  Church  of  England,  who  was  con- 
victed of  high  treason,  for  being  the 
medium  of  communication  between 
the  Committee  of  Public  Safety  in  Paris, 
and  the  Irish  malcontents  who  looked 
for  aid  in  their  schemes  from  France, 
Curran  sought  in  vain  to  influence  the 
jury  by  a  withering  sketch  of  the  in- 
famous Cockaigne,  the  single  witness, 
the  paid  agent  of  Pitt,  who  had  shared 
in  the  treasonable  transactions  that  he 
might  act  the  part  of  a  spy  and  in- 
former. But  when  the  prisoner  was 
brought  up  for  judgment,  the  law  was 
disappointed  in  its  victim.  Before 
sentence  could  be  pronounced,  Jack- 
son, who  had  taken  poison,  fell  dead 
In  the  dock.  Another  case  which  ex- 
cited much  interest,  and  in  which  the 
eloquence  of  Curran  saved  his  client,was 
that  of  a  Mr.  Peter  Finnerty,  the  pub- 
lister  of  a  newspaper  called  the  "  Press," 
who  was  tried  for  a  libel  on  Lord  Carn- 
den's  administration,  in  publishing  an 
article  on  the  execution  of  "William 
Orr,  a  victim  of  these  unhappy  times, 
whose  offence  had  been  the  adminis- 
tration of  the  unlawful  United  Irish- 
man's oath.  On  this  Finnerty  trial, 
Curran  put  forth  his  utmost  powers  in 
an  exhibition  of  the  character  and  pro- 
ceedings of  the  chief  witness  in  the 
case,  the  informer,  James  O'Brien, 
whose  name  he  made  for  ever  memor- 
able in  the  history  of  this  disastrous 
period. 

The  Rebellion  of  1798  ensued.  In 
the  year  previously,  Curran,  in  com- 
pany with  Grattan  and  others,  unable 
to  realize  their  patriotic  ideas  for  the 
welfare  of  their  country  or  affect  with 


moderation  the  dominant  party  in  the 
harsh  repressive  work  at  hand,  had 
withdrawn  from  their  seats  in  the  Irish 
House  of  Commons.  "I  agree,"  said 
Curran,  in  his  parting  words  to  his  fel- 
low members,  "  that  unanimity  at  this 
time  is  indispensable ;  the  house  seems 
pretty  unanimous  for  force;  I  am 
sorry  for  it,  for  I  bode  the  worst  from 
it :  I  shall  retire  from  a  scene  where  I 
can  do  no  good,  and  where  I  certainly 
should  disturb  that  equanimity ;  I  can 
not,  however,  go  without  a  parting  en 
treaty,  that  men  would  reflect  upon 
the  awful  responsibility  in  which  they 
stand  to  their  country  and  their  con- 
science, before  they  set  an^example  to 
the  people  of  abandoning  the  consti- 
tution and  the  law,  and  resorting  to 
the  terrible  experience  of  force."  It 
is  to  the  credit  of  Curran,  that  in  the 
bloody  scenes  that  followed,  as  well  as 
in  those  which  had  gone  before,  his 
best  services  were  ever  at  the  call  of 
the  unhappy  victims,  whether'  of  their 
own  treasonable  folly  or  of  the  system 
of  repression  adopted  by  the  govern- 
ment. Much  of  the  peculiar  force  and 
variety  of  talent  which  he  brought  to 
this  forensic  work,  perishing  with  the 
occasion,  has  been  inevitably  lost  to 
his  posterity.  Few  of  his  speeches  were 
preserved,  and  tnose  few  were  inade- 
quately reported,  and  necessarily  so, 
for  what  skilled  reporter,  if  such  a  one 
had  been  present,  could  render  the 
thousand  momentary  graces  of  expres- 
sion, elicited  on  the  instant  and  de- 
pendent upon  some  sudden  and  fleet- 
ing exigency  of  the  case  ?  The  words 
of  Hamlet  are  in  everybody's  hands, 
but  who  could  supply  the  acting  of 
Garrick?  "Of  all  orators,  "says  the 


JOHN  PHILPOT  CUKKAK 


407 


Rev.  George  Croly,  "Curran  was 
the  most  difficult  to  follow  by  tran- 
scription. The  elocution — rapid,  exu- 
berant, and  figurative  in  a  singular 
degree — was  often  compressed  into  a 
pregnant  pungency  which  gave  a  sen- 
tence in  a  word.  The  word  lost,  the 
charm  was  undone.  But  his  manner 
could  not  be  transferred,  and  it  was 
created  for  his  style: — his  eye,  hand 
and  figure  were  in  perpetual  speech. 
Nothing  was  abrupt  to  those  who 
could  see  him — nothing  was  lost,  ex- 
cept when  some  flash  would  burst  out, 
of  such  sudden  splendor  as  to  leave 
them  suspended  and  dazzled  too 
strongly  to  follow  the  lustres  that 
shot  after  it  with  resistless  illumina- 
tion." 

In  1803  came  that  ill-judged  and  mel- 
ancholy sequel  to  the  rebellion  which 
had  paid  the  penalty  of  its  daring  in 
the  death  or  exile  of  its  unhappy  abet- 
tors. This  was  the  short-lived  effort 
at  insurrection  of  Robert  Emmet  and 
his  friends  in  Dublin.  To  add  to  Cur- 
ran's  embarrassment  in  this  hopeless 
affair  in  which  he  was  much  too  wise 
to  participate,  the  arrest  of  Emmet,  by 
an  accident  of  fortune,  was  connected 
with  an  attachment  which  he  had 
formed  for  Curran's  daughter,  Sarah. 
He  might,  it  is  said,  have  escaped  from 
the  country  with  his  life,  but  he  would 
not  leave  without  seeking  an  interview 
with  the  lady  to  whom  he  was  ardently 
devoted ;  so  he  took  refuge  in  a  house 
situated  between  Dublin  and  Curran's 
country  seat,  where  he  might  have  the 
opportunity  of  carrying  out  his  inten- 
tions. In  this  place  he  was  arrested, 
and  some  papers  being  found  upon  his 
person  exhibiting  his  correspondence 


with  Miss  Curran,  her  father's  house 
was  searched  for  further  letters,  by 
which  means  Curran  first  became  ac- 
quainted with  this  intimacy  on  the 
part  of  his  daughter.  His  own  posi- 
tion was  above  suspicion,  and  the  pain- 
fulness  of  the  affair  was  confined  to  his 
private  domestic  sorrow.  Had  it  not 
been  for  these  unhappy  circumstances, 
he  would  doubtless  have  acted  as  the 
counsel  for  Emmet  on  his  trial,  for 
whose  character  he  had  great  regard, 
and  whose  melancholy  fate,  endured 
with  the  most  chivalric  spirit,  no  one 
could  have  more  sincerely  lamented. 
Sympathy  for  the  daughter  of  Curran 
still  survives  in  the  hearts  of  all  readers 
touched  by  the  feeling  and  graceful 
tribute  of  tKe  poet  Moore,  and  em- 
balmed in  that  plaintive  utterance  of 
Washington  Irving,  the  paper  entitled 
"The  Broken  Heart,"  in  the  "Sketch- 
Book." 

"  She  is  far  from  the  land  where  her  young 

hero  sleeps, 

And  lovers  around  her  are  sighing  ; 
But  coldly  she  turns  from,  their  gaze,  and 

weeps, 
For  her  heart  in  his  grave  is  lying." 

When  these  public  and  private  trou- 
bles were  over  and  Ireland  had  settled 
down  under  the  Union,  Curran,  on  the 
Whigs  coming  into  power  in  1806,  was, 
^pointed  Master  of  the  Rolls  in  Ire- 
land, and  a  member  of  the  Privy  Coun- 
cil, a  judicial  position  wl  »ch  he  held 
for  about  eight  years,  when  failing 
health  compelled  him  to  relinquish  it. 
It  was  in  this  period  of  his  career  that 
the  eminent  Counsellor  Phillips,  to 
whose  glowing  narrative  of  his  career, 
which  Lord  Brougham  pronounced 
"  one  of  the  most  extraordinary  pieces 
of  biography  ever  produced,  Boswell 


408 


JOHN  PHILPOT  CUKE  AN. 


minus  Bozzy,"  we  have  been  much 
indebted  in  this  sketch, — first  made 
Cumin's  acquaintance.  Nothing  can 
be  more  graphic  than  the  words  in 
which  he  has  related  his  impressions  of 
the  man  at  this  mature  period  of  his 
career.  "  When  I  was  called  to  the  bar," 
says  he, "  he  was  on  the  bench ;  and,  not 
only  bagless,  but  briefless,  I  was  one 
day,  with  many  an  associate,  taking 
the  idle  round  of  the  Four  Courts, 
when  a  common  friend  told  me  he  was 
commissioned  by  the  Master  of  the 
Rolls  to  invite  me  to  dinner  that  day 
at  the  Priory,  a  little  country  villa 
about  four  miles  from  Dublin.  Those 
who  recollect  their  first  introduction  to 
a  really  great  man,  may  easily  com- 
prehend my  delight  and- my  consterna- 
tion. Hour  after  hour  was  counted  as 
it  passed,  and,  like  a  timid  bride,  I 
feared  the  one  which  was  to  make  me 
happy.  It  came  at  last,  the  important 
jive  o'clock,  the  ne  plus  ultra  of  the 
guest  who  would  not  go  dinnerless  at 
Curran's.  Never  shall  I  forget  my  sen- 
sations when  I  caught  the  first  glimpse 
of  the  little  man  through  the  vista  of 
his  avenue.  There  he  was,  as  a  thou- 
sand times  afterward  I  saw  him,  in  a 
dress  which  you  would  imagine  he  had 
borrowed  from  his  tip-staff — his  hands 
on  his  sides — his  face  almost  parallel 
with  the  horizon — his  under  lip  pro- 
truded, and  the  impatient  step  and  the 
eternal  attitude  only  varied  by  the 
pause  during  which  his  eye  glanced 
from  his  guest  to  his  watch,  and  from 
his  watch  reproachfully  to  his  dining- 
room.  It  was  an  invincible  peculiarity, 
one  second  after  five  o'clock,  and  he 
would  not  wait  for  the  viceroy.  The 


moment  he  perceived  me,  he  took  me 
by  the  hand,  said  he  would  not  have 
any  one  introduce  me,  and  with  a  man- 
ner which  I  often  thought  was  charmed, 
at  once  banished  every  apprehension 
and  completely  familiarized  me  at  the 
Priory.  I  had  often  seen  Curran — often 
heard  of  him — often  read  him — but  no 
man  ever  knew  anything  about  him 
who  did  not  see  him  at  his  own  table 
with  the  few  whom  he  selected.  He 
was  a  little  convivial  deity.  He  soared 
in  every  region,  and  was  at  home  in 
all ;  he  touched  everything,  and  seem- 
ed as  if  he  had  created  it ;  he  mastered 
the  human  heart  with  the  same  ease 
that  he  did  his  violin.  You  wept  and 
you  laughed,  and  you  wondered ;  and 
the  wonderful  creature  who  made  you 
do  all  at  will,  never  let  it  appear  that 
he  was  more  than  your  equal. 

After  this,  we  have  but  little  to  re- 
cord, though  the  detail  of  his  strongly 
marked  personal  character  as  given  by 
his  appreciative  biographers  might  sup- 
ply many  a  page  of  amusing  and  in- 
structive incident.  His  last  years  were 
passed  in  broken  health,  chiefly  in  Dub- 
lin and  London,  in  intimacy  with  the 
society  gathering  about  the  brilliant 
Whig  leaders  of  the  time.  His  death, 
following  upon  an  attack  of  apoplexy, 
occurred  at  his  lodgings  at  Brompton, 
a  suburb  of  London,  on  the  14th  of 
October,  1817,  in  the  sixty-eighth  year 
of  his  age.  His  remains  were  privately 
interred  in  a  vault  of  one  of  the  Lon- 
don churches,  and  seventeen  years 
after,  were  removed  to  a  public  ceme- 
tery at  Dublin,  where  they  repose  in  a 
massive  sarcophagus,  simply  inscribed 
with  the  name  of  CUKEAN. 


410 


JANE  AUSTEN. 


heard,"  she  says,  "  a  more  perfect  or 
excellent  pun  than  his,  when  some  one 
told  him  how,  in  a  late  dispute  among 
the  privy  counsellors,  the  Lord  Chan- 
cellor struck  the  table  with  such  vio- 
lence that  he  split  it.  '  No,  no,  no,'  re- 
plied the  Master ;  1 1  can  hardly  per- 
suade myself  that  he  split  the  table, 
though  I  believe  he  divided 'the Board" 
His  humorous  cheerfulness  remained 
with  him  to  the  last.  Only  three  days 
before  he  expired,  at  the  age  of  ninety, 
he  was  told  that  an  old  acquaintance 
was  lately  married,  who  had  recovered 
from  a  long  illness  by  eating  eggs,  and 
that  the  wits  said  that  he  had  been 
egged  on  to  matrimony.  "  Then,"  said 
he,  on  the  instant,  "  may  the  yoke  sit 
easy  on  him."  "  I  do  not  know,"  says 
Mr.  Austen-Leigh,  "from  what  com- 
mon ancestor  the  Master  of  Baliol  and 
his  great-niece,  Jane  Austen,  with  some 
others  of  the  family,  may  have  derived 
the  keen  sense  of  humor  which  they 
certainly  possessed." 

The  Austens,  the  father  and  mother 
of  Jane,  lived  at  Steventon  for  about 
thirty  years,  a  family  of  five  sons  and 
two  daughters  growing  up  about  them. 
Of  the  sons,  the  oldest,  James,  the  fath- 
er of  our  biographer,  in  his  youth  at 
Oxford,  was  the  projector  and  chief 
supporter  of  the  collection  of  essays  on 
University  subjects  entitled,  "  The 
Loiterer;"  the  second,  adopted  by  his 
cousin,  Mr.  Knight,  a  wealthy  gentle- 
man in  Hampshire,  came  into  posses- 
sion of  his  name  and  property;  the 
third  became  a  clergyman,  and  the  two 
youngest  entered  the  navy,  both  at. 
taining  the  rank  of  admiral.  The  elder 
of  the  two  sisters,  Cassandra,  to  whom 
Jane  was  devotedly  attached,  is  spoken 


of  as  remarkable  for  her  prudence  and 
judgment.  Educated  by  their  father, 
the  children  all  proved  in  their  sever- 
al walks  of  life,  persons  of  intelligence 
and  character,  acting  well  their  parts 
in  the  world,  repaying  to  their  home 
the  benefits  of  its  amiable  culture. 
"  This  was  the  small  circle,  continually 
enlarged,  however,  by  the  increasing 
families  of  four  of  her  brothers,  within 
which  Jane  Austen  found  her  whole- 
some pleasures,  duties  and  interests, 
and  beyond  which  she  went  very  little 
into  society  during  the  last  ten  years 
of  her  life.  There  was  so  much  that 
was  agreeable  and  attractive  in  this 
family  party,  that  its  members  may  be 
excused  if  they  were  inclined  to  live 
somewhat  too  exclusively  within  it. 
They  might  see  in  each  other  much  to 
love  and  esteem,  and  something  to  ad- 
mire. The  family  talk  had  abundance 
of  spirit  and  vivacity,  and  was  never 
troubled  by  disagreements,  even  in  lit- 
tle matters,  for  it  was  not  their  habit 
to  dispute  or  argue  with  each  other: 
above  all,  there  was  strong  family  af- 
fection and  firm  union,  never  to  be 
broken  but  by  death.  It  cannot  be 
doubted  that  all  this  had  its  influence 
on  the  author  in  the  construction  of 
her  stories,  in  which  a  family  party 
usually  supplies  the  narrow  stage, 
while  the  interest  is  made  to  revolve 
round  a  few  actors. 

The  parsonage  at  Steventon  was 
pleasantly  situated  in  the  midst  of  a 
generally  agreeable  rural  district,  and  a 
sufficiently  commodious  dwelling,  large 
enough  not  only  for  the  rector's  family, 
but  for  the  accommodation  of  pupils, 
by  whose  instruction  he  added  to  his 
income.  It  was  the  seat  of  a  liberal, 


JAKE  AUSTEJN. 


411 


hospitable  mode  of  living,  representing 
the  upper  rank  of  the  prosperous  mid- 
dle class  of  England,  with  the  advan- 
tages of  a  superior  education  on  the  part 
of  the  inmates.  A  carriage  and  pair  of 
horses  were  kept,  and  the  society  of  the 
family  at  home  and  in  its  various  con- 
nexions, was  enlarged  by  intimacy  with 
many  cultivated  persons  of  the  neigh- 
borhood. In  the  midst  of  these  asso- 
ciations, Jane  developed  an  early  taste 
for  composition.  "It  is  impossible," 
writes  her  biographer,  "  to  say  at  how 
early  an  age  she  began  to  write.  There 
is  extant  an  old  copy-book  containing 
several  tales,  some  of  which  seem  to 
have  been  composed  while  she  was 
quite  a  girl.  These  stories  are  of  a 
slight  and  flimsy  texture,  and  are  gen- 
erally intended  to  be  nonsensical ;  but 
the  nonsense  has  much  spirit  in  it. 
Perhaps  the  most  remarkable  thing 
about  them  is  the  pure  and  idiomatic 
English  in  which  they  are  composed, 
quite  different  from  the  ornamented 
style  which  might  be  expected  from  a 
very  young  writer." 

Succeeding  these  first  rollicking  ef- 
fusions of  her  animal  spirits,  came  an- 
other class  of  writings,  also  unpublish- 
ed, and  very  unlike  those  by  which  her 
fame  was  established.  "Instead  of 
presenting  faithful  copies  of  nature, 
these  tales  were  generally  burlesques, 
ridiculing  the  improbable  events  and 
exaggerated  sentiments  which  she  had 
mot  with  in  sundry  silly  romances. 
Something  of  this  fancy  is  to  be 
found  in  ' Northanger  Abbey'  (the 
earliest  written  of  her  printed  works), 
but  she  soon  left  it  far  behind  her  in 
her  subsequent  course.  It  would  seem 
as  if  she  were  firs+  taking  note  of  all  the 


faults  to  be  avoided,  and  curiously  con- 
sidering how  she  ought  not  to  write,  be« 
fore  she  attempted  to  put  forth  her 
strength  in  the  right  direction."  The 
value  of  this  discipline  can  hardly 
be  overrated.  Her  writings  were 
-to  be  the  foundation  of  a  new  school 
of  fiction  in  English  literature,  that 
of  the  quiet,  natural  yet  humorous,  and 
intelligent  representation  of  the  scenes 
of  every-day  life ;  and  to  obtain  mas- 
tery in  this,  it  was  necessary  that  she 
should  free  her  mind  of  all  the  adverse 
influences  in  the  distorted  romantic  or 
sentimental  novels  of  tho  day.  Her 
sense  of  humor  led  her  to  ridicule  their 
defects;  so  that  when  she  fairly  set 
about  writing  for  the  public,  herself, 
she  was  not  only  on  her  guard,  but 
extremely  sensitive  in  rejecting  every- 
thing which  would  mar  the  purity  of 
her  conceptions.  Pure  writing,  free 
from  all  falsities  and  exaggerations,  a 
just  understanding  of  life  and  its  rela- 
tions in  the  sphere  within  which  she 
worked,  had  become  to  her  matters  of 
instinct,  and  when  she  put  pen  to  pa- 
per, it  was  to  utter  the  dictates,  as  it 
were,  of  her  literary  conscience.  A 
more  perfect  illustration  of  unerring 
taste  and  self-knowledge,  of  natural 
powers  so  habitually  under  the  control 
of  judgment,  is  not  probably  to  be  found 
in  the  whole  world  of  authorship  in 
fiction. 

Her  books  in  their  kind  are  unique. 
Their  peculiar  charm  of  ease,  simplicity, 
truthfulness  and  honestly  won  interest, 
has  been  felt  by  the  finest  minds.  Cole- 
ridge, the  most  subtle  of  English  critics, 
whose  unerring  genius  penetrated  every 
subject,  pronounced  them  "in  their 
way,  perfectly  genuine  and  indi  ridua] 


412 


JANE  AUSTEN. 


productions;"  Mackintosh,  a  kindred 
spirit,  admired  the  genius  which  had 
shown  itself  in  "sketching  out  that 
new  kind  of  novel ;"  Whately  brought 
his  logical  faculty  to  the  analysis  of 
their  secret  excellence ;  Lord  Holland 
was  never  weary  of  their  humor ;  and 
other  illustrious  eulogists  might  be 
cited,  but  the  highest  tribute  of  all, 
perhaps,  is  that  paid  to  the  author  by 
Sir  Walter  Scott  in  his  diary,  where 
he  records,  in  1826,  "Bead  again,  for 
the  third  time  at  least,  Miss  Austen's 
finely  written  novel  of  l  Pride  and 
Prejudice.'  That  young  lady  had  a 
talent  for  describing  the  involvements 
and  feelings  and  characters  of  ordinary 
life,  which  is  to  me  the  most  wonder- 
ful I  ever  met  with.  The  big  bow-wow 
strain  I  can  do  myself  like  any  now 
going;  but  the  exquisite  touch  which 
renders  ordinary  common-place  things 
and  characters  interesting  from  the 
truth  of  the  description  and  the  senti- 
ment, is  denied  to  me.  What  a  pity 
such  a  gifted  creature  died  so  early !" 

The  novel  thus  admired  by  Scott 
was  begun  in  1796,  before  the  writer 
was  twenty-one  years  old,  and  comple- 
ted within  the  following  ten  months. 
She  then  proposed  to  call  it  "  First 
Impressions."  No  sooner  was  it  finish- 
ed than  another  was  commenced  on 
the  basis  of  a  still  earlier  composition, 
"  Elinor  and  Marianne,"  the  work  in 
its  new  and  enlarged  form  bearing  the 
title,  "  Sense  and  Sensibility,"  the  first 
published  of  her  novels,  though  not 
till  some  twelve  or  thirteen  years  after 
the  time  at  which  it  was  written. 
"  Northanger  Abbey  "  was  also  compos- 
ed at  this  early  date  at  Steventon.  Much 
of  the  terseness  and  neatness  of  ex- 


pression which  characterizes  the  style 
of  these  books  is  doubtless  due  to  this 
long  period  of  opportunity  for  revision. 
Changes  had  meanwhile  taken  place  in 
the  old  home.  Her  father,  at  the  age 
of  seventy,  resigned  his  rectory  to  his 
son,  who  was  to  be  his  successor,  and 
removed  with  his  family  to  Bath,  where 
four  years  were  passed  till  his  death 
in  1805,  after  which  the  widow  with 
her  daughters  resided  an  equal  period 
at  Southampton.  In  1809  Jane  Austen 
was  finally  settled  with  her  mother  at 
a  house  belonging  to  her  brother,  who, 
as  we  have  mentioned,  had  assumed 
the  name  of  Knight,  at  Chawton,  still 
in  her  old  county  of  Hampshire.  Here 
the  last  eight  years  of  the  authoress 
were  spent ;  here  she  prepared  her 
earlier  writings  for  the  press,  and  here 
she  added  to  the  stock  several  others, 
completing  the  standard  series  of  her 
works.  In  their  first  reception  by 
the  trade  we  have  the  story,  common 
enough  in  the  history  of  literature,  of  the 
indifference  of  publishers  to  the  merit 
of  works,  which  on  their  appearance 
have  proved  decided  favorites  with 
the  public.  In  1797,  immediately  after 
its  completion,  the  Rev.  Mr.  Austen 
wrote  to  Cadell  the  publisher,  offering 
for  his  consideration  the  manuscript 
of  "Pride  and  Prejudice,"  which  he 
declined  even  to  look  at.  In  1803 
"  Northanger  Abbey "  was  sold  to  a 
publisher  in  Bath  for  ten  pounds,  and 
he  thought  so  little  of  his  purchase 
that  he  would  not  venture  the  further 
cost  of  printing,  and  kept  the  manu- 
script unused  for  years,  till  the  success 
of  the  author's  other  works  led  to  the 
repurchase  of  it  by  the  family  at  the 
price  which  had  been  originally  paid. 


JANE  AUSTEN. 


•413 


At  length,  in  1811,  a  publisher,  Eger- 
ton,  was  found  for  "Sense  and  Sensi- 
bility;" "Pride  and  Prejudice"  follow- 
ed in  1 8 1 3 ;  "  Mansfield  Park  "  appear- 
ed the  following  year;  "Emma,"  in 
1815 ;"  Northanger  Abbey  "  and  "  Per- 
feuasion"  appeared  three  years  later, 
after  the  author's  death. 

A  uniform  tone  runs  through  these 
various  compositions.  The  characters 
are  chosen  from  the  upper  walks  of 
English  life,  in  that  medium  class  be- 
low the  nobility  and  above  the  vulgar ; 
such  people,  in  fact,  as  the  station  of  her 
father  and  the  general  prosperity  of  the 
family  brought  her  in  contact  with. 
She  wrote  largely  from  her  observation, 
indeed  confined  herself  to  the  circle  of 
her  experience,  yet  she  copied  what 
she  saw  in  no  literal  or  servile  spirit. 
Fond  of  producing  the  familiar  scenes 
of  common  life,  she  yet  infused  into 
them  a  grace  and  manner  of  her  own; 
so  that  the  picture,  whether  heightened 
or  subdued  by  her  genius,  was  always 
distinguished  by  a  certain  harmony  of 
expression.  By  patient  thought  and 
long  discipline  her  natural  powers 
were  cultivated  to  an  exquisite  percep- 
tion of  the  proprieties.  Writing  to 
please  herself  and  satisfy  her  own 
judgment,  without  dictation  from  pub- 
lishers or  critics,  she  had  nothing  to 
turn  her  aside  from  that  charming 
simplicity  which  was  the  law  of  her 
nature.  It  was  impossible  to  di- 
vert her  from  the  path  which  her  own 
genius  had  marked  out  for  her.  To  a 
suggestion  from  a  friend,  who  had  been 
appointed  Secretary  to  Prince  Leopold 
about  the  time  of  his  marriage  to  the 
Princess  Charlotte,  that  an  historical 
romance  illustrative  of  the  House  of 


Cobourgh    would    be   an   acceptable 
work  from  her  pen,  she  replied  that 
such  a  composition  "might   be  much 
more  to  the  purpose  of  profit  or  pop- 
ularity than  any  such  pictures  of  do- 
mestic life  in  country  villages  as  I  deal ; 
but  I  could  no  more  write  a  romance 
than  an   epic  poem.     I  could  not  sit 
seriously  down  to  write  a  serious  ro- 
mance under  any  other  motive  than  to 
save  my  life ;  and,  if  it  were  indispen- 
sable for  me  to  keep  it  up,  and  never 
relax  into   laughing  at  myself  or  at 
other  people,  I  am  sure  I  should  be 
hung  before  I  had  finished  the  first 
chapter.     No,  I  must  keep  to  my  own 
style,  and  go  on  in  my  own  way ;  and 
though  I  may  never  again  succeed  in 
that,  I  am  convinced  that  I  should  to- 
tally fail  in  any  other."  The  same  friend 
had  proposed  for  her  consideration  the 
character  of  a  melancholy  clergyman, 
passing  his  time  between  city  and  coun- 
try, absorbed  in  his  literary  studies. 
"  The  comic  part  of  the  character,"  she 
replies,  "  I  might  be  equal  to,   but  not 
the  good,  the  enthusiastic,  the  literary. 
Such   a  man's   conversation   must   at 
times  be  on  subjects  of  science  and 
philosophy,  of  which  I  know  nothing ; 
or  at  least  be  occasionally  abundant  in 
quotations  and  allusions  which  a  woman 
who,  like  me,  knows   only  her   own 
mother  tongue,  and  has  read  little  in 
that,  would  be  totally  without  the  pow- 
er of  giving.     A  classical  education, 
or  at  any  rate  a  very  extensive  acquain- 
tance with  English  literature,  ancient 
and  modern,  appears  to  me  quite  indis- 
pensable for  the  person  who  would 
do  any  justice  to  your  clergyman ;  and 
I  think  I  may  boast  myself  to  be,  with 
all  possible  vanity,  the  most  unlearned 


JAKE  AUSTEN. 


and  uninformed  female  who  ever  dared 
to  be  an  authoress."  Again,  in  a  letter 
to  a  friend,  who  appears  to  have  been 
engaged  in  the  composition  of  a  ro- 
mance :  h  I  am  quite  concerned  for  the 
loss  your  mother  mentions  in  her  letter. 
Two  chapters  and  a  half  to  be  missing 
is  monstrous  !  It  is  well  that  I  have 
not  been  at  Steventon  lately,  and  there- 
fore cannot  be  suspected  of  purloining 
them ;  two  strong  twigs  and  a  half 
towards  a  nest  of  my  own  would  have 
been  something.  I  do  not  think,  how- 
ever that  any  theft  of  that  sort  would 
be  really  very  useful  to  me.  What 
should  I  do  with  your  strong,  manly, 
vigorous  sketches,  full  of  variety  and 
glow?  How  could  I  possibly  join 
them  on  to  the  little  bit  (two  inches 
wide)  of  ivory  on  which  I  work  with 
so  fine  a  brush,  as  produces  little  effect 
after  much  labor  ? " 

It  is  precisely  in  this  fine  work  and 
assiduous  labor  that  the  excellence  of 
Miss  Austen's  writings  consists.  By 
this  they  have  outlived  whole  genera- 
tions of  fiction  perishing  on  the  shelves 
of  circulating  libraries — their  subject 
matter  being  of  a  general,  not  merely 
local  or  particular  interest.  An  inti- 
mate study  of  human  nature  was  the 
author's  great  resourse.  It  would  seem 
harsh  to  compare  her  delicate  products 
with  the  coarser  works  of  Fielding  and 

O 

Smollett,  yet,  in  a  far  gentler  walk,  she 
was  a  pupil  with  them  of  the  same 
school,  interpreting  life  and  manners, 
and  the  actions  of  the  heart.  Her  char- 
acters thus,  spite  of  the  change  of  hab- 
its, are  alive  among  us  at  the  present 
day,  and  it  is  because  we  see  the  per- 
sons of  our  acquaintance  reflected  in 
their  various  moods  upon  her  page, 


that  we  enjoy  and  admire  her  books, 
Macaulay  in  his  comparison  of  her  ge- 
nius with  that  of  Madame  D'Arblay, 
has  gone  so  far  as  to  class  her  in  this 
portraiture  of  character  with  the  great- 
est of  dramatists.  "  Shakespeare,"  says 
he,  "  has  had  neither  equal  nor  second. 
But  among  the  writers  who,  in  the  va- 
riety which  we  have  noticed,  have  ap- 
proached nearest  to  the  manner  of  the 
great  master,  we  have  no  hesitation  in 
placing  Jane  Austen,  a  woman  of  whom 
England  is  justly  proud.  She  has  giv- 
en us  a  multitude  of  characters,  all,  in 
a  certain  sense,  commonplace,  all  such 
as  we  meet  every  day ;  yet  they  are 
all  as  perfectly  discriminated  from  each 
other  as  if  they  were  the  most  eccentric 
of  human  beings.  There  are,  for  in- 
stance, four  clergymen,  none  of  whom 
we  should  be  surprised  to  find  in  any 
parsonage  in  the  kingdom,  Mr.  Edward 
Ferrars,  Mr.  Henry  Tilney,  Mr.  Edmund 
Bertram,  and  Mr.  Elton.  They  are  all 
specimens  of  the  upper  part  of  the  mid- 
dle class.  They  have  all  been  liberally 
educated.  They  all  lie  under  the  re- 
straints of  the  same  sacred  profes- 
sion. They  are  all  young.  They  are 
all  in  love.  Not  one  of  them  has 
any  hobby-horse,  to  use  the  phrase 
of  Sterne.  Not  one  has  a  ruling  pas- 
sion, such  as  we  read  of  in  Pope.  Who 
would  not  have  expected  them  to  be 
insipid  likenesses  of  each  other  ?  No 
such  thing.  Harpagon  is  not  more  un 
like  to  Jourdain,  Joseph  Surface  is  noi 
more  unlike  to  Sir  Lucius  O'Trigger, 

oo     / 

than  every  one  of  Miss  Austin's  young 
divines  to  all  his  reverend  brethren. 
And  almost  all  this  is  done  by  touches 
so  delicate,  that  they  elude  analysis, 
that  they  defy  the  powers  of  descrip 


JANE  AUSTEN. 


415 


tion,  and  that  we  know  them  to  exist 
only  by  the  general  effect  to  which 
they  have  contributed."  A  similar 
remark  has  been  made  by  Arch- 
bishop Whately  in  a  noticeable  pas- 
sage of  his  article  on  the  writings  of 
Miss  Austen,  in  the  "  Quarterly  Re- 
view." "  She  has  not  been  forgetful," 
he  writes,  "  of  the  important  maxim, 
so  long  ago  illustrated  by  Homer,  and 
afterwards  enforced  by  Aristotle,  of 
saying  as  little  as  possible  in  her  own 
person,  and  giving  a  dramatic  air  to 
the  narrative,  by  introducing  frequent 
conversations,  which  she  conducts  with 
a  regard  to  character  hardly  exceeded 
even  by  Shakspeare  himself. " 

Passages  like  these  might  be  multi- 
plied from  the  tributes  paid  to  the  ge- 
nius of  Miss  Austen  by  her  critics. 
But  we  have  cited  enough  to  indicate 
to  the  reader  her  refined  and  substan- 
tial merits.  Turning  from  her  books  to 
the  authoress  herself,  we  find  her  rep- 
resenting in  her  own  character  the  best 
qualities  of  her  fictitious  personages, 
cheerful,  self-denying,  constant  in  her 
affections,  always  relied  upon  for  her 
prudence  and  judgment.  "  In  person," 
as  she  is  described  by  her  biographer, 
"she  was  very  attractive;  her  figure 
was  rather  tall  and  slender,  her  step 
light  and  firm,  and  her  whole  appear- 
ance expressive  of  health  and  anima- 
tion. In  complexion,  she  was  a  clear 
brunette  with  a  rich  color;  she  had 
full  round  cheeks,  with  mouth  and 
nose  small  and  well  formed,  bright 
hazel  eyes,  and  brown  hair  forming 
natural  curls  close  round  her  face.  If 
not  so  regularly  handsome  as  her  sister, 
yet  her  countenance  had  a  peculiar 
charm  of  its  own  to  the  eyes  of  most 


beholders.  At  the  time  of  which  I 
am  now  writing,  she  was  never  seen 
either  morning  or  evening  without  a 
cap ;  I  believe  that  she  and  her  sister 
were  generally  thought  to  have  taken 
to  the  garb  of  middle  age  earlier  than 
their  years  or  their  looks  required ;  and 
that,  though  remarkably  neat  in  their 
dress  as  in  all  their  ways,  they  were 
scarcely  sufficiently  regardful  of  the 
fashionable,  or  the  becoming." 

Referring  the  reader  for  many  inter- 
esting details  of  Miss  Austen's  personal 
habits  to  the  memoir  by  her  nephew 
and  to  an  appreciative  review  of  it  by 
a  female  writer  of  our  own  day  of  ge- 
nius kindred  to  her  own,*  we  must 
hasten  to  the  closing  scene  of  this  fair 
maiden's  life.  In  1816,  symptoms  be- 
gan to  be  apparent  of  the  progress  of 
the  fatal  consumptive  malady  which 
had  settled  upon  her.  Her  strength 
was  declining,  but  not  her  constitu- 
tional cheerfulness,  which  sustained 
her  to  the  last.  She  went  on  with  the 
work  she  had  in  hand,  her  novel  "  Per- 
suasion," and  re- wrote  two  of  its  most 
important  chapters.  This  was  finished 
in  the  summer.  In  the  spring  of  the 
following  year,  1819,  she  removed  foi 
medical  advice  to  Winchester,  where, 
lovingly  attended  by  her  sister,  she 
lingered  in  increasing  feebleness  till 
her  death,  on  the  18th  of  July.  Her 
last  words,  on  being  asked  by  her  at- 
tendants whether  there  was  any  thing 
she  wanted,  were, "  Nothing  but  death." 
Her  remains  were  interred  in  "Win- 
chester Cathedral.  A  slab  of  black 
marble  marks  the  place,  near  the  tomb 
of  William  of  Wykeham. 

*  Miss  Thackeray,  in  the  "  Ccrnhill  Magazine  " 
for  August,  1871. 


WILLIAM     WILBERFORCE. 


TTTILLIAM  WILBERFORCE  was 
»  »  born  at  Hull,  in  Yorkshire, 
England,  the  24th  of  August,  1759. 
Though  the  first  of  his  name  to  bring 
the  family  into  prominent  notice  be- 
fore the  public,  he  came  of  an  ancient 
stock.  His  grandfather,  who  was  twice 
mayor  of  Hull,  changed  the  name  from 
its  older  form,Wilberfoss.  He  was  pos- 
sessed of  considerable  property  by  in- 
heritance and  was  engaged  in  business 
in  the  Baltic  trade,  at  the  head  of  a  mer- 
cantile house  in  which  his  son  Robert 
had  a  share.  The  latter  was  married  to 
the  daughter  of  Thomas  Bird,  of  Barton, 
in  Oxfordshire.  Four  children  were 
the  offspring  of  this  marriage,  of  whom 
William  was  the  third — the  only  son. 
Me  was  apparently  of  weak  constitu- 
tion in  his  infancy,  small  and  feeble, 
but  with  indications  of  a  vigorous  intel- 
1  ect.  His  disposition  in  these  early  years 
»s  spoken  of  as  singularly  affectionate. 
At  the  age  of  seven,  he  was  sent  to  the 
grammar-school  of  his  native  place,  pre- 
sided over  by  Joseph  Milner,  elder 
brother  of  the  celebrated  Isaac  Milner, 
Dean  of  Carlisle,  who  was  at  this  time 
his  assistant.  Wilberforce  was  noticed 
at  the  school  for  the  beauty  of  his  elo- 
cution, his  recitations  being  held  forth 

(416) 


to  the  other  boys  as  a  model  for  imi- 
tation. His  father  dying  when  his  son 
was  but  nine  years  old,  he  was  trans- 
ferred to  the  care  of  his  uncle,  William 
Wilberforce,  at  London,  who  placed 
him  as  a  parlor  boarder  in  a  school  at 
Wimbledon,  kept  by  a  Scotchman 
chiefly  frequented  by  the  sons  of  mer- 
chants, where,  as  he  afterwards  said, 
"  they  taught  everything  and  noth- 
ing." Here  he  remained  two  years, 
passing  his  holidays  at  his  uncle's 
house,  with  occasional  visits  to  Not- 
tingham and  Hull.  The  example  or 
exertions  of  his  aunt,  a  member  of  the 
Thornton  family,  a  great  admirer  of 
the  preaching  of  Whit efi  eld,  seemed 
likely  permanently  to  affect  his  relig 
ious  character  by  drawing  him  within 
the  fold  of  Methodism,  for  which  his 
mother,  who  was  afterwards  described 
by  Wilberforce  himself,  as  "what  I 
should  call  an  Archbishop  Tillotson 
Christian,^'  seemed  to  have  little  sym- 
pathy, if  not  a  decided  repugnance. 
Becoming  acquainted  with  the  impres- 
sions thus  made  upon  his  mind,  she 
promptly  withdrew  him  from  what  the 
family  considered  a  dangerous  influ- 
ence and  brought  him  home  again. 
The  views  of  his  grandfather  on  the 


418 


WILLIAM  WILBERFOKCE. 


mathematics,  much  to  his  disadvantage 
as  he  came  to  think,  he  was  yet  a  good 
scholar  and  acquitted  himself  well  at 
the  examinations,  and  obtained  a  de- 
gree. 

Before  leaving  the  university,  the 
mercantile  business,  in  which  he  might 
have  engaged,  being  no  longer  a  ne- 
cessity to  him,  he  had  turned  his 
thoughts  towards  political  life,  and  a 
speedy  dissolution  of  parliament  being 
expected,  looked  forward  to  the  repre- 
sentation of  his  native  town  of  Hull. 
In  anticipation  of  this  event,  he  en- 
gaged actively  in  the  canvass  on  the 
spot,  and  followed  up  a  body  of  the 
freemen  of  the  place  who  resided  in 
the.  vicinity  of  the  Thames  in  London, 
entertaining  them  at  suppers  at  Wap- 
ping,  and  practicing  the  art  of  popular 
eloquence  in  addressing  them.  The 
dissolution  opportunely  came  off  just 
after  he  arrived  at  age,  an  event  which 
was  duly  celebrated  with  the  roasting 
of  an  ox  and  other  festivities  on  his 
own  grounds.  In  the  election  which 
followed  he  was  successful  against 
powerful  opposition  in  the  county,  ac- 
cording to  the  custom  of  the  day  pay- 
ing the  voters  freely  for  their  suffrages. 
The  election  cost  him  over  eight  thou- 
sand pounds.  His  success  gave  him  a 
brilliant  introduction  to  the  capital. 
"  When  I  went  up  to  Cambridge,"  he 
said,  "  I  was  scarcely  acquainted  with 
a  single  person  above  the  rank  of  a 
country  gentleman ;  and  even  when  I 
left  the  university,  so  little  did  I  know 
of  general  society,  that  I  came  up  to 
London  stored  with  arguments  to 
prove  the  authenticity  of  Rowley's 
Poems;  and  now  I  was  at  once  im- 
mersed in  politics  and  fashion.  The 


very  first  time  I  went  to  Boodle's,  I 
won  twenty-five  guineas  of  the  Duke 
of  Norfolk.  I  belonged  at  this  time 
to  five  clubs,  —  Miles  and  Evans's, 
Brookes's,  Boodle's,  White's,  Goos- 
tree's.  The  first  time  I  was  at  Brookes's, 
scarcely  knowing  any  one,  I  joined  from 
more  shyness  in  play  at  the  faro-table, 
where  George  Selwyn  kept  bank.  A 
friend  who  knew  my  inexperience,  and 
regarded  me  as  a  victim  decked  out  for 
sacrifice,  called  to  me,  '  What,  Wilber- 
force,  is  that  you  ? '  Selwyn  quite  re- 
sented the  interference,  and  turning  to 
him,  said  in  his  most  expressive  tone, 
"O,  sir,  don't  interrupt  Mr.  Wilber- 
force,  he  could  not  be  better  employed.' 
Nothing  could  be  more  luxurious  than 
the  style  of  these  clubs.  Fox,  Sheri- 
dan, Fitzpatrick  and  all  your  leading 
men,  frequented  them,  and  associated 
upon  the  easiest  terms;  you  chatted, 
played  at  cards,  or  gambled,  as  you 
pleased." 

Wilberforce  had  formed  the  ac- 
quaintance of  Pitt  at  Cambridge ;  they 
were  born  in  the  same  year,  and  com- 
menced  their  parliamentary  career 
about  the  same  time.  An  intimacy 
was  formed  between  them  in  their 
friendly  association  at  the  club  at 
Goostree's,  of  which  Pitt  at  this  time 
was  a  constant  frequenter,  and  where 
the  society  was  composed  mostly  of  a 
number  of  intellectual  young  men  re- 
cently from  their  university  studies, 
and  then  entering  upon  public  life. 
"  Pitt,"  says  Wilberforce,  in  his  memo- 
randa of  this  period, "was  the  wittiest 
man  I  ever  knew,  and  what  was  quite 
peculiar  to  himself,  had  at  all  times  his 
wit  under  perfect  control.  Others  ap- 
peared struck  by  the  unwonted  asso- 


WILLIAM  WILBER  FORCE. 


419 


ciation  of  brilliant  images ;  but  every 
possible  combination  of  ideas  seemed 
always  present  to  his  mind,  and  lie 
could  at  once  produce  whatever  he  de- 
sired. I  was  one  of  those  who  met  to 
spend  an  evening  in  memory  of  Shak- 
speare  at  the  Boar's  Head,  Eastcheap. 
Many  professed  wits  were  present,  but 
Pitt  was  the  most  amusing  of  the  party, 
and  the  readiest  and  most  apt  in  the 
required  allusions.  He  entered  with 
the  same  energy  into  all  our  different 
amusements;  we  played  a  good  deal 
at  Goostree's,  and  I  well  remember  the 
intense  earnestness  which  he  displayed 
when  joining  in  those  games  of  chance. 
He  perceived  their  fascination,  and 
soon  after  suddenly  abandoned  them 
for  ever."  Wilberforce  himself,  as  he 
intimates,  was  inclined  to  play  deeply. 
He  more  than  once  lost  a  hundred 
pounds  at  the  faro-table.  One  night, 
in  the  absence  of  the  person  who  kept 
the  bank,  he  accepted  a  playful  chal- 
lenge to  preside  himself,  and  rose  a 
winner  of  six  hundred  pounds.  As 
much  of  this  fell  upon  young  men, 
heirs  in  expectancy,  whose  pockets  were 
not  over  supplied  with  money,  Wilber- 
force was  naturally  pained  at  the  an- 
noyance to  which  they  were  subjected, 
and  was  thus  cured,  say  his  biogra- 
phers, of  his  fondness  for  the  gambling- 
table. 

He  was  in  the  meantime  closely  at- 
tentive to  his  parliamentary  duties, 
watching  the  debates  and  studying 
the  House  of  Commons.  He  main- 
tained his  independence ;  though  gen- 
erally in  opposition  to  Lord  North's 
administration,  particularly  on  the 
American  question,  sometimes  acting 
<vith  it.  He  was  in  no  haste  to  speak, 


had  no  desire  to  thrust  himself  into  a 
debate,  but  wisely  waited  till  the  per- 
sonal occasion  arose.  His  first  speech 
was  in  May,  1781,  against  the  revenue 
laws,  in  support  of  a  petition  which 
he  presented  from  the  town  of  Hull. 
Having  no  country  residence  on  any 
of  his  landed  property  in  Yorkshire, 
and  being  exceedingly  fond  of  the 
pleasures  of  rural  life,  he  made  his  re- 
sort at  the  close  of  the  session  of  par- 
liament, at  a  house  which  he  rented 
for  seven  years  at  Rayrigg,  on  the 
banks  of  Lake  Windermere,  in  West- 
moreland. Here,  we  are  told,  he  re- 
tired in  the  first  summer  recess,  with  a 
goodly  assortment  of  books,  classics, 
statutes  at  large  and  history,  but  an 
influx  of  London  and  college  friends, 
with  the  society  of  his  mother  and  sur- 
viving sister,  effectually  put  a  limit  to 
study.  "  Boating,  riding  and  continual 
parties  at  my  own  house  and  Sir  Mi- 
chael le  Fleming's  fully  occupied  my 
time  until  I  returned  to  London  in  the 
following  autumn."  The  next  session 
he  took  a  more  prominent  part  in  the 
House  by  a  speech  in  February  against 
Lord  North's  administration,  obtaining 
the  commendations  of  Thomas  Town- 
shend,  and  the  especial  notice  of  Fox 
and  Lord  Rockingham.  The  debate 
was  on  a  motion  of  General  Conway 
for  peace  with  America,  and  when  the 
vote  was  taken,  it  was  virtually  a  de- 
feat of  the  minister,  the  majority  in 
his  favor  being  only  one.  Wilber- 
force was  now  on  increasing  terms  of 
intimacy  with  Pitt,  spending  the  Easter 
holidays  with  him  at  Bath,  and  subse- 
quently sharing  with  him  the  country 
residence  at  Wimbledon,  which  had 
fallen  to  him  by  the  death  of  his  undo 


420 


WILLIAM  WILBERFOKCE. 


This,  in  the  view  of  his  biographers 
(his  sons  Robert,  Isaac,  and  Samuel, 
the  present  Bishop  of  Winchester),  was 
the  most  critical  period  of  his  course. 
1  He  had  entered  in  his  earliest  man- 
hood upon  the  dissipated  scenes  of 
fashionable  life,  with  a  large  fortune 
and  most  acceptable  manners.  His 
ready  wit,  his  conversation  continually 
sparkling  with  polished  raillery  and 
courteous  repartee,  his  chastened  live- 
liness, his  generous  and  kindly  feelings; 
all  secured  him  that  hazardous  ap- 
plause with  which  society  rewards  its 
ornaments  and  victims.  His  rare  ac- 
complishment in  singing  tended  to  in- 
crease his  danger.  'Wilberforce,  we 
must  have  you  again ;  the  prince  says 
he  will  come  at  any  time  to  hear  you 
sing,'  was  the  flattery  which  he  receiv- 
ed after  his  first  meeting  with  the 
Prince  of  Wales,  in  1782,  at  the  luxu- 
rious soirees  of  Devonshire  House.  He 
was  also  an  admirable  mimic,  and  un- 
til reclaimed  by  the  kind  severity  of 
the  old  Lord  Camden,  would  often  set 
the  table  in  a  roar  by  his  perfect  im- 
itation of  Lord  North.  His  affection 
for  Lord  Camden  was  an  intimation 
at  this  very  time  of  the  higher  texture 
of  his  mind.  Often  would  he  steal 
away  from  the  merriment  and  light 
amusements  of  the  gayer  circle,  to 
gather  wisdom  from  the  weighty  words 
and  chosen  anecdotes  in  which  the 
veteran  chancellor  abounded.  His 
affection  was  warmly  returned  by 
Lord  Camden,  who  loved  the  cheerful 
earnestness  with  which  he  sought  for 
knowledge.  'Lord  Camden  noticed 
me  particularly,'  he  said,  '  and  treated 
me  with  great  kindness.  Amongst 
other  things  he  cured  me  of  the  dan- 


gerous art  of  mimicry.  When  invited 
by  my  friends  to  witness  my  powers 
of  imitation,  he  at  once  refused,  saying 
slightingly  for  me  to  hear  it,  "  It  is  but 
a  vulgar  accomplishment."  "Yes,  but 
it  is  not  imitating  the  mere  manner; 
Wilberforce  says  the  very  thing  Lord 
North  would  say."  "  Oh,"  was  his  re- 
ply, "  every  one  does  that."  This  friend- 
ly intercourse  was  long  continued. 
'How  many  subjects  of  politics  and 
religion,'  writes  the  old  lord,  with  a 
pressing  invitation  to  Camden  Place, 
in  1787,  *  might  we  not  have  settled  by 
this  time,  in  the  long  evenings.' ': 

We  have  incidentally  noticed  the 
fondness  of  Wilberforce  for  the  coun- 
try. It  was  a  happy  trait  in  his  dis- 
position which  was  an  indication  of 
character,  and  doubtless  had  an  in- 
fluence in  its  formation.  To  a  politi- 
cian or  statesman,  such  a  resource  of 
escape  for  a  time  from  the  engrossing 
excitement  and  disturbances  of  the 
world  seems  indispensable,  a  retreat 
where 

Wisdom's  self 

Oft  seeks  to  sweet  retired  Solitude, 
Where  with  her  best  nurse,  Contemplation, 
She  plumes  her  feathers,  and  lets  grow  hei 

wings, 

That  in  the  various  bustle  of  resort 
Were  all  too  ruffled,  and  sometimes  impair'd. 

This  advantage  Wilberforce  found  at 
Wimbledon.  Writing  to  his  sister  in 
the  summer  of  1783  —  a  remarkable 
letter,  which  exhibits  the  formation  of 
his  full  speaking  etyle,  and  the  con- 
sciousness with  the  growth  of  his  moral 
conscientiousness — he  says,  "The  ex- 
istence I  enjoy  here  is  of  a  sort  quite 
different  from  what  it  is  in  London 
I  feel  a  load  off  my  mind ;  nor  is  it  in 
the  mighty  powers  of  Mrs.  Siddons. 


WILLIAM  WILBERFOECE. 


421 


nor  in  the  yet  superior  and  more  ex- 
alted gratifications  of  the  House  of 
Commons,  which  you  seem  to  think 
my  summum  bonum,  to  compensate  to 
me  for  the  loss  of  good  air,  pleasant 
walks,  and  what  Milton  calls  'each 
rural  sight,  each  rural  sound.' 
If  my  moral  and  religious  principles 
be  such  as  in  these  days  are  not  very 
generally  prevalent,  perhaps  I  owe  the 
continuance  of  them  in  a  great  measure 
to  solitude  in  the  country.  This  is  not 
merely  the  difference  between  theory 
and  practice,  it  is  not  merely  (though 
that  be  something)  that  one  finds  one- 
self very  well  able  to  resist  temptations 
to  \  ice,  when  one  is  out  of  the  way  of 
being  exposed  to  them ;  but  in  towns 
there  is  no  leisure  for  thought  or  seri- 
ous reflection,  and  we  are  apt  to  do 
that,  with  regard  to  moral  conduct, 
which  we  are  in  vain  advised  to  do  in 
the  case  of  misfortunes — to  look  only 
on  those  who  are  worse  than  ourselves, 
till  we  flatter  ourselves  into  a  favorable 
opinion  of  our  own  modes  of  life  and 
exalted  ideas  of  our  own  virtue.  But  in 
the  country  a  little  reading  or  reflection 
presents  us  with  a  more  complete  and 
finished  model,  and  we  become  sensible 
of  our  own  imperfections ;  need  I  add 
that  trite  maxim,  which,  however,  I 
will,  for  it  is  a  true  one,  that,  humility 
is  the  surest  guide  both  to  virtue  and 
wisdom.  For  my  own  part,  I  never 
leave  this  poor  villa  without  feeling 
iny  virtuous  affections  confirmed  and 
strengthened ;  and  I  am  afraid  it  would 
be  in  some  degree  true  if  I  were  to  add, 
that  I  never  remain  long  in  London 
without  their  being  somewhat  injured 
and  diminished." 

T:i  the  aut;imn  of  1783,  during  the 


recess  of  parliament,  Wilberforce,  with 
Pitt,  who  was  now  his  constant  com- 
panion, spent  a  few  days  at  the  seat  oi 
Mr.  Bankes,  in  Dorsetshire.  The 
friends  were  out  shooting,  when,  it  is 
said,  Pitt  had  a  narrow  escape  from 
Wilberforce' s  gun.  The  two  friends, 
joined  by  Mr.  Eliot,  immediately  after 
embarked  at  Dover  for  an  excursion  to 
Paris.  The  tour  appears  to  have  been 
somewhat  hastily  contrived,  for  on 
their  arrival  at  Rheims,  where  they 
proposed  to  rest  for  a  time  to  gain 
some  knowledge  of  the  language,  they 
found  themselves  with  but  a  single  let- 
ter of  introduction,  obtained  for  them 
from  the  banker,  Thellusson,  and  ad- 
dressed to  a  M.  Cons  tier,  a  correspond- 
ent of  his  house.  "  It  was  with  some  sur- 
prise," writes  Wilberforce  to  his  friend 
Bankes,  "that  the  day  after  our  arri- 
val, having  dressed  ourselves  unusually 
well,  and  proceeded  to  the  house  of  M. 
Constier,  we  found  him  behind  a  coun- 
ter distributing  figs  and  raisins.  I  had 
heard  that  it  was  very  usual  for  gen- 
tlemen on  the  continent  to  practice 
some  handicraft  trade  or  other  for 
their  amusement,  and,  therefore,  for 
my  own  part,  I  concluded  that  his 
taste  was  in  the  fig  way,  and  that  he 
was  only  playing  at  grocer  for  his  di- 
version; and  viewing  the  matter  in 
this  light,  I  could  not  help  admiring 
the  excellence  of  his  imitation ;  but  we 
soon  found  that  Mons.  Constier  was  a 
'  veritable  epicier]  and  that  not  a  very 
eminent  one.  He  was  very  fair  and 
candid,  however,  and  acknowledged  to 
us  that  he  was  not  acquainted  with  any 
of  the  gentry  of  the  place,  and  there- 
fore could  not  introduce  us  to  them, 
We  returned  to  our  inn,  and  aftei 


122 


WILLIAM  WILBEKFOKCE. 


spending  nine  or  ten  days  without  ma  k- 
ing  any  great  progress  in  the  French 
language,  which  could  not  indeed  be 
expected  from  us,  as  we  spoke  to  no 
human  being  but  each  other  and  our 
Irish  courier,  and  when  we  began  to  en- 
tertain serious  thoughts  of  leaving  the 
place  in  despair,  by  way  of  a  parting 
effort  we  waited  upon  our  epicier,  and 
prevailed  on  him  to  put  on  a  bag  and 
sworcl  and  carry  us  to  the  intendant 
of  police,  whom  he  supplied  with  gro- 
ceries. This  scheme  succeeded  admira- 
bly. The  intendant  was  extremely 
civil  to  us,  and  introduced  us  to  the 
archbishop,  who  gave  us  two  very  good 
and  pleasant  dinners,  and  would  have 
had  us  stay  a  week  with  him.  (N.  B. 
Archbishops  in  England  are  not  like 
Arclieveques  in  France ;  these  last  are 
jolly  fellows  of  about  forty  years  of 
age,  who  play  at  billiards,  etc.,  like 
other  people.)  We  soon  got  acquainted 
with  as  many  of  the  inhabitants  as  we 
could  wish,  especially  an  Abbe  De 
Lageard,  a  fellow  of  infinite  humor, 
and  of  such  extraordinary  humanity, 
that  to  prevent  our  time  hanging  heavy 
on  our  hands,  he  would  sometimes  make 
us  visits  of  five  or  six  hours  at  a  stretch. 
Our  last  week  passed  very  pleasantly, 
and,  for  myself,  I  was  really  very 
sorry  when  the  day  arrived  for  our  set- 
ting off  for  Paris."  This  Abbe  De 
Lageard,  in  the  revolution  which  en- 
sued, became  a  refugee  in  England, 
when  Wilberforce  amply  returned  the 
hospitality  he  had  received  at  Rheiins. 
The  story  of  this  adventure  preceded 
the  party  to  Fontainebleau,  where,  on 
their  arrival,  they  were  entertained  by 
the  court,  Mr.  Pitt,  we  are  told,  being 
often  i  allied  by  the  queen  on  his  ac- 


quaintance with  the  epicier.  Franklin 
was  then  in  Paris,  and  was  warm  in 
his  greetings  of  Wilberforce,  whose 
course  in  opposition  to  the  war  with 
America  he  had  watched  with  interest. 
Lafayette  also  attracted  much  of  the 
travellers'  attention.  Wilberforce  no- 
tices him  in  his  diary, "  A  pleasing,  en- 
thusiastical  man ;  his  wife,  a  sweet  wo- 
man." Pitt,  being  suddenly  recalled 
to  London,  the  friends  found  them- 
selves at  the  end  of  October  again  in 
England,  ready  to  take  part  in  the  im- 
portant political  movements  of  the  day. 
The  opposition  to  the  unnatural  Fox 
and  North  Coalition  which  then  ruled 
in  parliament  was  rapidly  rising  to  a 
head;  all  eyes  were  on  Pitt,  who  al- 
ready, at  the  age  of  twenty-four,  had 
established  for  himself  a  distinguished 
reputation  in  public  affairs  as  the 
worthy  successor  of  his  father,  the 
great  Earl  of  Chatham;  and  the  first 
determined  shock  given  to  the  new  ad- 
ministration, in  the  vote  on  the  India 
question,  brought  Pitt  into  office  as 
prime  minister.  His  friend,  Wilber- 
force, had  rendered  him  valuable  ser- 
vice in  the  preliminary  agitation  which 
had  brought  him  into  power.  Hasten- 
ing to  York,  where  the  great  whig 
houses  of  the  country  had  concerted  a 
movement  in  support  of  the  ministry, 
Wilberforce  addressed  a  meeting  in 
the  castle  yard,  convened  with  the  ex 
pectation  of  securing  a  declaration  in 
favor  of  the  coalition.  The  discussion 
had  been  protracted  through  the  day, 
the  weather  was  insufferably  bad,  and 
the  audience  had  grown  weary  when 
Wilberforce  mounted  the  table  under  a 
wooden  canopy  before  the  high  sheriff's 
chair.  Little  was  expected  under  such 


WILLIAM  WILBEEFORCE. 


circumstances  from  a  speaker  of  such  a 
slight  physical  appearance.  But  the 
charm  of  his  voice,  always  of  unusual 
sweetness  and  clearness,  with  the 
force  and  animation  of  his  language, 
held  the  attention  of  the  company  for 
more  than  an  hour.  Boswell,  the  bi- 
ographer of  Johnson,  happened  to  be 
present  and  has  described  the  effect  of 
the  young  orator's  eloquence  in  a  few 
striking  words,  "  I  saw  what  seemed  a 
shrimp  mount  on  the  table,  but,  as  I 
listened,  he  grew  and  grew,  till  the 
shrimp  became  a  whale."  The  speech 
produced  an  immense  effect,  the  gen- 
eral views  of  the  country  being  in  his 
favor,  as  he  proceeded  with  his  attack 
on  the  coalition,  describing  the  India 
bill  which  they  had  proposed  as  "  the 
offspring  of  that  unnatural  conjunc- 
tion, marked  with  the  features  of  both 
its  parents,  bearing  token  to  the  vio- 
lence of  the  one  and  the  corruption  of 
the  other."  Before  he  had  concluded, 
he  was  interrupted  by  the  arrival  of 
an  express  from  Pitt,  informing  him 
that  the  king  had  dissolved  the  parlia- 
ment, an  announcement  which  he  turn- 
ed to  account  in  his  appeal  to  the  as- 
sembly. In  the  election  which  fol- 
lowed he  stood  for  the  county;  a 
large  sum  of  money  was  subscribed  to 
bear  the  expenses,  and  he  was  returned 
member  for  Yorkshire,  a  signal  honor 
for  his  youthful  experience;  but  the 
fortunes  of  Pitt  were  in  the  ascendant ; 
he  had  proved  himself  useful  to  the 
rising  statesman  and  was  now  to  share 
in  his  successes. 

He  took  his  seat  in  the  new  parlia- 
ment, supported  Pitt  in  his  majorities, 
and  at  the  end  of  the  first  session,  after 
renewing  his  old  rural  associations  in 


Westmoreland,  set  out  again  in  October 
for  the  continent  with  a  family  party 
composed  of  his  mother,  sister,  two  fe- 
male cousins  in  search  of  health,  and 
a  chosen  companion  for  his  own  pri- 
vate carriage  in  the  person  of  his  old 
instructor  Isaac  Milner,  now  Fellow 
of  Queen's  College,  Cambridge.  The 
influence  of  Milner,  a  man  of  earnest 
religious  views,  of  what  may  be  termed 
the  evangelical  school,  was  to  be  of 
the  utmost  importance  in  the  develop 
ment  of  the  character  of  Wilberforce. 
At  first  we  hear  little  of  this  as  the 
friends  journeyed  through  France,  by 
Lyons  and  the  Rhone,  on  their  way  to 
Nice,  whence  Wilberforce  returned  to 
support  the  measures  of  Pitt  at  the 
opening  of  parliament.  In  the  summer 
of  the  following  year,  1785,  he  was 
again  at  liberty  in  the  recess  to  rejoin 
the  family  party,  now  together  at 
Genoa,  on  their  return  home  through 
Switzerland.  Travelling  as  before  with 
his  friend  Milner  as  the  intimate  com- 
panion of  his  journey,  he  now  began 
to  be  seriously  affected  by  his  more 
decided  religious  views.  Up  to  this 
time  he  had  mingled  freely  with  society, 
and  freely  shared  its  pleasures  and 
amusements;  but  there  was  always  a 
latent  inclination  to  piety  in  his  dis- 
position, derived  perhaps  from  that 
early  contact  with  Methodism,  which 
led  him  safely  through  the  grosser  ex 
citements  of  the  world.  The  travellers 
on  this  new  journey  read  the  Greek 
Testament  together  and  discussed  its 
doctrines.  "  By  degrees,"  says  Wilber* 
force  of  this  period, "  I  imbibed  Milner's 
sentiments,  though  I  must  confess  with 
shame  that  they  long  remained  merely 
as  opinions  assented  to  by  my  under 


424 


WILLIAM  WILBERFOKCE. 


standing,  but  not  influencing  my  heart. 
My  interest  in  them  certainly  increased, 
and  at  length  I  began  to  be  impressed 
with  a  sense'  of  their  importance. 
Milner,  though  full  of  levity  on  all 
other  subjects,  never  spoke  on  this  but 
with  the  utmost  seriousness,  and  all 
he  said  tended  to  increase  my  attention 
to  religion."  At  Aix-la-Chapelle,  where 
the  party  tarried  some  time,  we  hear  of 
Mrs.  Crewe  expressing  some  surprise  at 
his  thinking  it  wrong  to  go  to  the  the- 
atre and  abstaining  from  travelling  on 
Sunday.  An  earnest  solemnity  was 
more  and  more  taking  possession  of  his 
nature.  "  Often,"  he  writes,  "  while 
in  the  full  enjoyment  of  all  that  this 
world  could  bestow,  my  conscience 
told  me  that,  in  the  true  sense  of  the 
word,  I  was  not  a  Christian.  I  laughed, 
I  sang,  I  was  apparently  gay  and  hap- 
py, but  the  thought  would  steal  across 
me,  '  What  madness  is  all  this ;  to  con- 
tinue easy  in  a  state  in  which  a  sudden 
call  out  of  the  world  would  consign 
me  to  everlasting  misery,  and  that, 
when  eternal  happiness  is  within  my 
grasp.'  For  I  had  received  into  my 
understanding  the  great  truths  of  the 
gospel,  and  believed  that  its  offers  were 
free  and  universal ;  and  that  God  had 
promised  to  give  the  Holy  Spirit  to 
them  that  asked  for  it.  At  length 
such  thoughts  as  these  completely  oc- 
cupied my  mind  and  I  began  to  pray 
earnestly."  He  had  in  fact  entered 
upon  a  course  of  reflection,  which  soon 
led  him  into  a  systematic  religious  life, 
which  determined  as  well  the  objects 
as  the  motives  of  his  future  career,  per- 
Ronal  and  political 

Among  the  earliest  fruits  of  these 
new  resolutions,  was  the  formation  in 


1787  of  a  Society  for  the  Reformation, 
of  Manners,  supported  by  a  Royal 
Proclamation  against  Vice  and  Im- 
morality, and  during  the  same  year 
the  formal  advocacy  of  a  cause  which 
had  some  time  previously  engaged  his 
attention,  and  which  became  the  long 
and  crowning  effort  of  his  career — the 
abolition  of  the  slave-trade.  The  in- 
iquity of  this  traffic  had,  from  the  time 
of  its  denunciation  by  "William  Penn, 
more  than  a  century  before,  excited 
the  horror  of  the  members  of  the  So- 
ciety of  Friends,  and  led  to  their  plac- 
ing themselves  in  an  attitude  of  un- 
yielding opposition  to  its  continuance. 
Granville  Sharp  had  published,  in 
1769,  "A  Representation  of  the  In- 
justice and  Dangerous  Tendency  of 
Tolerating  Slavery  in  England,"  and, 
by  his  protection  and  vindication  of 
the  rights  of  the  negro  Somerset, 
claimed  as  a  slave  by  his  old  master, 
had,  in  1772,  brought  about  the  decision 
in  the  courts,  that  the  slave-owner  could 
not  maintain  his  claim  to  his  alleged 
human  property  on  English  soil.  After 
this  grand  declaration  of  the  freedom 
of  the  slave  was  secured,  Sharp  con- 
tinued his  attacks  against  the  institu- 
tion of  slavery  itself.  Quite  recently, 
in  1785,  the  vice-chancellor  of  the 
University  of  Cambridge  had  an- 
nounced as  the  subject  of  a  prize  Latin 
dissertation  for  the  senior  bachelors, 
the  question :  "  Is  it  allowable  to  make 
slaves  of  others  against  their  will  ? " 
and  the  prize  had  been  awarded  to  an 
ingenious  young  man,  the  son  of  a 
clergyman,  Thomas  Clarkson,  who 
thenceforth  devoted  his  life  to  the 
liberation  of  the  oppressed  negro  race. 
Clarkson's  Essay,  translated  into  Eng 


WILLIAM  WILBERFOKCE. 


.  lish,  brought  vividly  before  the  public 
the  miseries  of  the  cruel  traffic.  It 
was  at  this  time  that  Wilberforce  was 
meditating  and  planning  the  introduc- 
tion of  the  question  into  parliament, 
as  a  work  of  national  reform.  In  May, 
1787,  an  "Association  for  the  Aboli- 
tion of  Negro  Slavery  "  was  formed  in 
London,  Granville  Sharp  being  chos- 
en chairman  by  the  twelve  persons, 
mostly  London  merchants,  and  all 
but  two,  Quakers,  who  composed  its 
first  meeting.  Clarkson  was  employed 
with  them,  in  collecting  and  diffusing 
information,  and,  in  co-operation  with 
the  Association,Wilberforce  undertook 
the  work  in  parliament.  It  was  es- 
sentially with  him  a  moral,  rather  than 
a  political  movement ;  certainly,  not 
with  any  view  to  personal  aggrandize- 
ment or  advancement.  It  sprang  di- 
rectly from  the  greater  conscientious- 
ness of  his  new  religious  sentiments, 
which  impelled  him  to  the  labors  of 
Christian  philanthropy  Hence,  we 
find  in  his  private  diary  an  increasing 
sense  of  responsibility  with  more  ex- 
acting self-examination,  especially  as 
he  approaches  this  great  question  of 
the  abolition  of  the  slave-trade  in  par- 
liament, which  he  felt  had  need  of  all 
his  faculties  and  resources.  The  so- 
lemnity of  the  diary  is  noticeable  in 
anticipation  of  his  advocacy  of  the 
cause. 

Pitt,  who  had  entered  parliament  as 
a  reformer,  was  readily  secured  as  a 
supporter  of  the  measure;  but,  as  the 
opposition  to  it  in  the  first  instance 
was  formidable  from  the  pecuniary  in- 
terests of  the  traffic,  intimately  con- 
nected with  the  cherished  slave  labor 
of  the  West  India  planters,  the  pre- 
54 


liminary  proceedings  were  to  be  taken 
with  caution.  The  first  step  was  to 
accumulate  a  sufficient  body  of  evi- 
dence on  the  subject  to  arouse  the 
conscience  of  the  country  and  render 
legislation  imperative.  A  summons 
was  accordingly  issued  by  Pitt,  in 
1788,  to  the  Privy  Council  to  examine 
as  a  board  of  trade  the  state  of  the 
commercial  intercourse  with  Africa. 
This  was  accepted  by  Wilberforce  with 
his  characteristic  prudence,  in  prefer- 
ence to  a  hasty  and  ineffectual  condem- 
nation of  the  system  by  a  mere  resolu 
tion.  The  disease  was  deeply  rooted, 
and  the  cure  was  to  be  slow  and  ex- 
haustive. While  Wilberforce  was  at 
the  very  commencement  of  his  self-im- 
posed task,  his  health  suddenly  failed 
him,  and  there  was  every  prospect  that 
his  life  would  be  prematurely  cut  short. 
His  constitution  was  always  delicate, 
and  there  now  appeared  to  be  an  ab- 
solute decay  of  the  vital  powers.  His 
frame  was  wasted,  and  his  digestive 
organs  greatly  impaired.  A  consulta- 
tion of  the  leading  physicians  of  the 
day  was  held,  and  their  opinion  as  de- 
clared to  his  family  was,  that  "  he  had 
not  stamina  to  last  a  fortnight."  In 
this  strait  he  was  sent  to  Bath  to  drink 
the  waters.  Before  he  left,  in  antici- 
pation of  death,  he  solemnly  entrusted 
the  cause  of  abolition  to  Pitt,  who 
promised  to  look  after  its  interests.. 
Writing  from  Bath,  in  April,  to  Mr. 
Wy vill,  he  says :  "  Behold  me,  a  ban- 
ished man  from  London  and  business. 
It  is  no  more  than  I  can  expect,  if  my 
constituents  vote  my  seat  abdicated, 
and  proceed  to  the  election  of  another 
representative:  however,  I  trust,  I 
shall  yet  be  enabled,  by  God's  bless 


426 


WILLIAM  WILBEKFOKCE. 


ing,  to  do  the  public  and  them  some 
service.  As  to  the  slave  question,  I  do 
not  like  to  touch  on  it,  it  is  so  big  a 
one,  it  frightens  me  in  my  present 
weak  state.  Suffice  it  to  say,  and  I 
know  the  pleasure  it  will  afford  you 
to  hear  it,  that  I  trust  matters  are  in  a 
very  good  train.  To  you,  in  strict  con- 
fidence, I  will  entrust,  that  Pitt,  with  a 
warmth  of  principle  and  friendship 
that  have  made  me  love  him  better 
than  I  ever  did  before,  has  taken  on 
himself  the  management  of  the  busi- 
ness, and  promises  to  do  all  for  me  if 
I  desire  it,  that,  if  I  were  an  efficient 
man,  it  would  be  proper  for  me  to  do 
myself." 

This  assurance,  doubtless,  assisted 
in  his  recovery.  Pitt  earnestly  took 
the  matter  in  hand,  superintended 
the  inquiries  of  the  Privy  Council, 
and,  in  May,  moved  a  resolution  bind- 
ing the  House  of  Commons  to  consider 
the  circumstances  of  the  slave-trade, 
early  in  the  following  session.  Burke 
and  Fox  gave  it  their  cordial  support. 
All  looked  to  Wilberforce  as  the  best 
advocate  of  the  cause.  "  It  is  better," 
said  Fox,  with  the  characteristic  gen- 
erosity of  his  temper,  "  that  the  cause 
should  be  in  his  hands  than  in  mine ; 
from  him,  I  honestly  believe  that  it 
will  come  with  more  weight,  more  au- 
thority, and  more  probability  of  suc- 
cess." Meanwhile,  "Wilberforce  was  re- 
gaining health  at  Bath,  his  restoration 
being  attributed  to  a  judicious  use  of 
opium.  He  was  soon  enabled  to  visit 
Cambridge  and  his  favorite  resort  at 
the  lakes  in  Westmoreland,  where  he 
remained  surrounded  by  company  the 
remainder  of  the  season. 

The  time  was  now  at  hand  for  for- 


mally opening  the  question  of  the  con 
tinued  existence  of  the  slave-trade,  in 
the  House.  Wilberforce,  as  we  have 
intimated,  was  preparing  his  mind  foi 
it  by  special  discipline.  He  appears 
in  his  diary  constantly  contending 
against  the  distraction  of  too  much 
company — an  inconvenience  which  one 
in  his  position  could  not  well  avoid. 
"I  trust,"  he  writes  in  his  diary,  "I 
can  say  in  the  presence  of  God,  that  I 
do  right  in  going  into  company,  keep- 
ing up  my  connections,  etc. ;  yet,  as  it 
is  clear  from  a  thorough  examination 
of  myself  that  I  require  more  solitude 
than  I  have  had  of  late,  let  me  hence- 
forth enter  upon  a  new  system  through- 
out. Rules — As  much  solitude  and 
sequestration  as  are  compatible  with 
duty.  Early  hours,  night  and  morn- 
ing. Abstinence,  as  far  as  health  will 
permit.  Regulation  of  employments 
for  particular  times.  Prayer,  three 
three  times  a  day  at  least,  and  begin 
with  serious  reading  or  contemplation. 
Self-denial  in  little  things.  Slave-trade 
my  main  business  now."  On  the  12th 
of  May,  1789,  he  opened  the  debate  in 
the  House  of  Commons  by  moving  a 
series  of  resolutions  founded  on  the 
report  of  the  Privy  Council,  express- 
ing the  various  evils  of  the  slave-trade, 
and  the  expediency  of  its  suppression 
— resolutions  which  te  supported,  not- 
withstanding the  delicate  state  of  his 
health,  in  a  masterly  and  effective 
speech  of  three  hours  and  a  half  in 
length,  going  over  the  whole  subject 
in  detail,  placing  the  evil  on  the  foot 
ing  of  a  national  immorality,  tracing 
its  injurious  effects  alike  on  Africa,  the 
slaves  and  their  owners,  and  picturing 
with  sympathetic  impressiveness  the 


WILLIAM  WILBEEFOECE. 


427 


terrors  of  the  middle  passage,  "  so 
much  misery  crowded  into  so  little 
room,  where  the  aggregate  of  suffering 
must  be  multiplied  by  every  individ- 
ual tale  of  woe,"  while  he  summoned 
Death  as  his  "last  witness,  whose  in- 
fallible testimony  to  their  unutterable 
wrongs  can  neither  be  purchased  nor 
repelled."  It  is  to  be  regretted  that 
we  have  no  adequate  report  of  this 
memorable  speech.  Parliamentary  re- 
porting was  in  its  infancy.  There  was 
then  no  Dickens  in  the  gallery,  with 
sympathetic  power  and  feeling,  to 
spread  its  thrilling  periods  with  con- 
summate fidelity  before  the  public. 
But  from  the  sentences  given  from  the 
notice  of  the  address  given  by  his  bi- 
ographers, we  may  infer  something  of 
the  value  of  the  whole,  which  gained 
at  the  time  the  plaudits  of  such  dis- 
tinguished judges  as  Pitt,  Fox,  Erskine 
and  Burke,  who  spoke  of  its  "  masterly, 
impressive  and  eloquent  manner — not, 
perhaps,  to  be  surpassed  in  the  remains 
of  Grecian  eloquence."  Bishop  Por- 
teus,  the  amiable  prelate  who  had  late- 
ly succeeded  Lowth  in  the  see  of  Lon- 
don, and  who  brought  the  aid  of  his 
position  to  the  support  of  so  many  of 
the  generous  enterprises  of  philanthro- 
py of  his  time,  was  present  at  the  de- 
bate, and  in  a  letter  to  the  Kev.  W. 
Mason,  pronounced  the  address  of  Wil- 
berf orce  "  one  of  the  ablest  and  most 
eloquent  speeches  that  was  ever  heard 
in  the  House  of  Commons  or  any  other 
place.  It  made  a  sensible  and  powerful 
impression  upon  the  House.  He  was 
supported  in  the  noblest  manner  by 
Mr.  Pitt,  Mr.  Burke  and  Mr.  Fox,  who 
all  agreed  in  declaring  that  the  slave- 
trade  was  the  disgrace  and  opprobiuni 


of  the  country,  and  that  nothing  but 
entire  abolition  could  cure  so  mon- 
strous an  evil.  It  was  a  glorious  night 
for  the  country."  The  friends  of  the 
cause,  however,  had  to  wait  many  anx- 
ious years  before  their  benevolent  ef- 
forts were  carried  into  effect.  The  con- 
sideration of  the  subject  was  adjourned, 
through  various  vicissitudes  of  inter- 
ested opposition,  with  many  obstruc- 
tions from  session  to  session,  but  WiL 
berforce  and  his  illustrious  friends  as- 
sociated with  him  in  the  cause  of  abo- 
lition never  wearied  in  their  exertions 
in  its  behalf. 

An  interesting  episode  in  Wilber- 
force's  public  career  occurred  in  the 
summer  of  1789,  during  the  recess  of 
parliament,  in  a  visit  to  Hannah  More, 
at  her  residence  at  Cowslip  Green. 
While  there,  a  visit  was  proposed  to 
the  Cheddar  Cliffs,  in  the  vicinity,  as 
the  chief  natural  curiosity  of  the  re- 
gion. He  went  with  some  reluctance, 
admired  the  beauties  of  the  spot,  but 
was  sadly  impressed  with  the  neglect- 
ed condition  of  the  poor  people  whom 
he  found  there.  He  determined  at 
once  that  something  should  be  done 
for  them,  and  in  the  evening  of  the  day 
of  the  excursion  proposed  to  Miss  More 
that  if  she  would  be  at  the  trouble  of 
assisting  them,  he  would  be  at  the 
expense.  The  result  was  the  founda- 
tion of  the  charitable  schools  in  the 
district,  with  their  good  work  of  re- 
ligious and  social  improvement,  which, 
in  spite  of  many  obstacles,  proved  so 
eminently  successful  under  the  super- 
intendence of  Miss  More  and  her  sis- 
ters. Of  these,  Wilberforce  was  a 
liberal  supporter.  "As  for  the  ex 
pense,"  he  wrote  to  Hannah  More 


128 


WILLIAM   WILBERFORCE. 


when  her  plans  were  matured,  "the 
best  proof  you  can  give  me  that  you 
believe  me  hearty  in  the  cause,  or  sin- 
cere in  my  wishes,  is  to  call  on  me  for 
money  without  reserve.  Every  one 
should  contribute  out  of  his  own 
proper  fund.  I  have  more  money 
than  time,  and,  if  you,  or  rather  your 
sister,  on  whom  I  foresee  must  be  de- 
volved the  superintendence  of  our  in- 
fant establishment,  will  condescend  to 
be  my  almoner,  you  will  enable  me  to 
employ  some  of  the  superfluity  it  has 
pleased  God  to  give  me  to  good  pur- 
pose. .  .  I  shall  take  the  liberty  of 
enclosing  a  draft  for  forty  pounds; 
but  this  is  only  meant  for  beginning 
with." 

Of  his  personal  habits  and  surround- 
ings at  this  period  of  his  career — he 
was  now  at  the  age  of  thirty-one — we 
have  some  interesting  notices  brought 
together  by  his  biographers.  "  His 
house  was  continually  open  to  an  in- 
flux of  men  of  all  conditions.  Pitt  and 
his  other  parliamentary  friends  might 
be  found  there  at  l  dinner  before  the 
House.'  So  constant  was  their  resort, 
that  it  was  asserted,  not  a  little  to  his 
disadvantage  in  Yorkshire,  that  he  re- 
ceived a  pension  for  entertaining  the 
partisans  of  the  minister.  Once  every 
week  the '  Slave  Committee '  dined  with 
him.  Messrs.  Clarkson,  Dickson,  etc.,  jo- 
cosely named  by  Mr.  Pitt, '  his  white  ne- 
groes,' were  his  constant  inmates,  and 
were  employed  in  classing,  revising, 
and  abridging  evidence  under  his  own 
eye.  'I  cannot  invite  you  here,'  he 
writes  to  a  friend  who  was  about  to 
visit  London  for  advice,  'for  during 
fche  sitting  of  parliament,  my  house  is 
a  mere  hotel.1  His  breakfast-table  was 


thronged  by  those  who  to  came  to  him 
on  business,  or  with  whom,  for  any 
of  his  many  plans  of  usefulness,  he 
wished  to  become  personally  acquaint- 
ed. He  took  a  lively  interest  in  the 
Elland  Society ;  and  besides  subscrib- 
ing to  its  funds  one  hundred  pounds 
per  annum  (under  four  anonymous  en- 
tries, to  avoid  notice),  he  invited  to 
his  house  the  young  men  under  educa- 
tion, that  he  might  be  able  to  distrib- 
ute them  in  proper  situations.  No  one 
ever  entered  more  readily  into  sterling 
merit,  though  concealed  under  a  rough 
exterior.  l  We  have  different  forms,' 
ne  said,  'assigned  to  us  in  the  school 
of  life — different  gifts  imparted.  All 
is  not  attractive  that  is  good.  Iron 
is  useful,  though  it  does  not  sparkle 
like  the  diamond.  Gold  has  not  the 
fragrance  of  a  flower.  So,  different 
persons  have  various  modes  of  excel- 
lence, and  we  must  have  an  eye  to  all.' 
Yet  no  one  had  a  keener  or  more  hu- 
morous perception  of  the  shades  of 
character.  'Mention  when  you  write 
next,'  says  the  postscript  of  a  letter  to 
Mr.  Hey,  on  the  announcement  of  a  new 
candidate  for  education,  '  the  length  of 
his  mane  and  tail ;'  and  he  would  re- 
peat with  a  full  appreciation  of  its  hu- 
mor, the  answer  of  his  Lincolnshire 
footman,  to  an  inquiry  as  to  the  ap- 
pearance of  a  recruit  who  presented 
himself  in  Palace  Yard, — '  What  sort 
of  person  is  he  ?'  '  Oh,  sir,  he  is  a 
rough  one.'  The  circumstances  of  his 
life  brought  him  into  contact  with  the 
greatest  varieties  of  character.  His 
ante-room  was  thronged  from  an  early 
hour ;  its  first  occupants  being  gener 
ally  invited  to  his  breakfast-table ;  and 
its  later  tenants  only  quitting  it  when 


WILLIAM  WILBEEFOECE. 


429 


he  himself  went  out  on  business.  Like 
every  other  room  in  his  house,  it  was 
well  stored  with  books ;  and  the  ex. 
perience  of  its  necessity  had  led  to  the 
exchange  of  the  smaller  volumes,  with 
which  it  was  originally  furnished,  for 
cumbrous  folios,  which  could  not  be 
carried  off  by  accident  in  the  pocket 
of  a  coat.'  Its  group  was  often 
most  amusing,  and  provoked  the  wit 
of  Mrs.  H.  More  to  liken  it  to  *  Noah's 
ark,  full  of  beasts,  clean  and  unclean.' 
On  one  chair  sat  a  Yorkshire  consti- 
tuent, manufacturing  or  agricultural; 
on  another  a  petitioner  for  charity,  or 
a  House  of  Commons  client;  on  an- 
other a  Wesleyan  preacher ;  while  side 
by  side  with  an  African,  a  foreign 
missionary,  or  a  Haytian  professor, 
sat  perhaps  some  man  of  rank, 
who  sought  a  private  interview,  and 
whose  name  had  accidentally  escap- 
ed announcement.  To  these  morn- 
ings succeeded  commonly  an  after- 
noon of  business,  and  an  evening  in 
the  House  of  Commons.  Yet  in  this 
constant  bustle  he  endeavored  still  to 
live  by  rule.  t  Alas,'  he  writes  upon 
the  31st  of  January,  *  with  how  little 
profit  has  my  time  passed  away  since 
I  came  to  town !  I  have  been  almost 
always  in  company,  and  they  think  me 
like  them  rather  than  become  like  me. 
I  have  lived  too  little  like  one  of  God's 
peculiar  people.'  '  Hence  come  waste 
of  time,  forgetfulness  of  God,  neglect 
of  opportunities  of  usefulness,  mistak- 
en impressions  of  character.  Oh  may 
I  be  more  restrained  by  my  rules  for 
the  future,  and  in  the  trying  work  up- 
on which  I  am  now  entering,  when  I 
shall  be  so  much  in  company,  and  give 
so  many  entertainments,  may  I  labor 


doubly  by  a  greater  cultivation  of  a 
religious  frame,  by  prayer,  and  by  all 
due  temperance,  to  get  it  well  over.' '' 
At  the  outset  of  his  more  immediate 
philanthropic  career,  Wilberforce,  af- 
ter a  careful  survey  of  his  powers, 
wrote  the  following  solemn  declara- 
tion :  "  God  Almighty  has  set  before 
me  two  great  objects,  the  suppression 
of  the  slave  trade  and  the  reformation 
of  manners."  The  latter,  illustrated  in 
many  ways  by  his  social  influence  and 
example,  found  a  special  expression  in 
the  composition  of  his  moral  treatise 
entitled,  "A  Practical  View  of  the 
Prevailing  Religious  System  of  Pro- 
fessed Christians  in  the  Higher  and 
Middle  Classes  of  this  Country,  Con- 
trasted with  Real  Christianity."  He 
began  this  work  at  Bath,  in  the  sum- 
mer of  1793,  and  labored  upon  it  at 
intervals  till  its  completion  and  publi- 
cation, in  1797.  It  may  have  been  sug- 
gested by  the  corresponding  essays  of 
Hannah  More,  "Thoughts  on  the  Im- 
portance of  the  Manners  of  the  Great 
to  General  Society,"  and  "  Estimate  of 
the  Religion  of  the  Fashionable  World," 
which  appeared  respectively  in  1788 
and  1791.  All  of  these  works,  as  their 
titles  fully  indicate,  had  a  similar  ob- 
ject, and  all  were  alike  successful ;  but 
the  book  of  Wilberforce,  from  his  po- 
sition in  society  and  in  parliament,  as 
might  have  been  anticipated,  had  a 
superior  authority  and  weight  of  in- 
fluence. So  little  promising,  however, 
as  a  pecuniary  speculation  did  the 
work  appear  to  Cadell,  the  publisher, 
that  he  expressed  the  opinion,  that  if 
the  author's  name  were  put  upon  the 
title-page,  an  edition  of  five  hundred 
copies  might  be  ventured  upon.  So 


430 


WILLIAM  WILBERFORCE. 


eager  proved  the  demand  for  it,  that  it 
was  out  of  print  in  a  few  days,  and 
within  six  months  five  editions — an 
aggregate  of  7500  copies — were  sold. 
It  lono-  continued  to  be  one  of  the 
most  popular  religious  books  of  the 
age,  edition  after  edition  appearing  in 
England  and  America,  where  it  was 
warmly  welcomed,  while  it  was  freely 
circulated  in  India,  and  translated  into 
the  French,  Italian,  Spanish,  Dutch, 
and  German  languages.  It  was  hailed 
with  admiration  at  the  start  by  some 
of  the  finest  and  loftiest  minds  of  Eng- 
land, by  Porteus,  who  expressed  his 
thankfulness  to  Providence  for  its  op- 
portune appearance,  and  by  Burke,  then 
about  to  leave  the  world,  whose  dying 
hours  it  consoled  with  its  words  of 
comfort  and  promise  of  usefulness.  He 
charged  his  friend,  Dr.  Lawrence,  with 
the  expression  of  his  thanks  to  its  au- 
thor "  for  having  sent  such  a  book  into 
the  world."  The  same  year  of  its  pub- 
lication, Wilberforce,  in  the  month  of 
May,  was  married  at  Bath,  to  Barbara 
Anne,  eldest  daughter  of  Isaac  Spoon- 
er,  of  Elm  don  Hall,  in  the  county  of 
Warwick. 

Returning  to  the  progress  of  the  Ab- 
olition question  in  parliament,  we  find 
Wilberforce  steadily  at  work  at  the 
measure,  meeting  the  powerful  opposi- 
tion of  the  African  merchants  and  West 
India  planters  organized  against  it.    In 
preparation  for  the  debate  in  1790,  he 
even  sacrificed  his  ordinary  scrupulous 
observance  of  the  Sunday,  for  what, 
in  spite  of  his  regrets,  he  could  but  feel 
was  the  higher  duty  of  omitting  noth- 
ing which  lay  in  his  power  to  serve 
this  great  cause  of  humanity,  in  which 
'.he  interests  of  Christianity  itself  were 


so  deeply  involved.  "  Spent  Sunday," 
he  writes  in  his  diary,  "  as  a  working 
day  —  did  not  go  to  church  —  slave 
trade.  Gave  up  Sunday  to  slave  bus- 
iness— did  business,  and  so  ended  this 
Sabbath.  I  hope  it  was  a  grief  to  me 
the  whole  time  to  turn  it  from  its  true 
purposes."  Time  wears  on,  and  the 
cause  apparently  makes  little  advance : 
but  public  opinion,  sure  to  act  upon 
parliament  in  the  end,  is  being  enlight- 
ened by  the  perseverance  of  Clarkson 
and  others.  In  vain,  however,  Wilber- 
force introduces  his  motion  in  the 
House  for  the  abolition  of  the  trade, 
in  1792 ;  something  was  gained  there, 
but  the  House  of  Lords  delayed  the 
work,  as  they  did  again,  after  too  long 
an  interval,  in  1804,  when  the  House 
once  more  adopted  the  measure.  Fi- 
nally, after  other  vexatious  interrup- 
tions, in  1807,  the  act  of  abolition  was 
passed  by  both  Houses,  Fox,  at  the 
special  request  of  Wilberforce,  intro- 
ducing the  bill  in  the  House  of  Com- 
mons, and  Lord  Granville,  carrying  it 
through  the  House  of  Lords,  the  last 
and  crowning  act  of  his  ministry.  Its 
passage  through  the  House  was  a  con- 
tinued scene  of  triumph  for  Wilber- 
force, in  whose  honor  everv  voice  was 

'  */ 

raised.  Sir  Samuel  Romilly  ended  his 
speech  with  a  tribute  worthy  of  last- 
ing remembrance,  as  he  contrasted  "  the 
feelings  of  Napoleon  in  all  his  great- 
ness, with  those  of  that  honored  indi- 
vidual, who  would  this  day  lay  his 
head  upon  his  pillow  and  remember 
that  the  slave  trade  was  no  more.  The 
royal  assent  was  given,  and  the  iniqui- 
ty, so  far  as  England  was  concerned, 
was  abolished.  Wilberforce  received 
many  other  congratulations  on  the 


WILLIAM  WILBERFOKCE. 


event;  for  himself  he  had  but  one 
thought :  "  What  thanks,"  says  he, 
"  do  I  owe  the  Giver  of  all  good,  for 
bringing  me  in  His  gracious  provi- 
dence to  this  great  cause,  which  at 
1-ength,  after  almost  nineteen  years  la- 
bor, is  successful. 

The  great  object  of  the  life  of  Wil- 
berforce  was  now  achieved.  More 
than  a  quarter  of  a  century  yet  remain- 
ed to  him  of  life.  He  remained  in 
parliament  till  1825,  when  he  finally 
retired.  For  five  succesive  elections 
he  represented  Yorkshire  without  a 
contest — including  the  whole  period 
and  beyond  it  of  his  Abolition  strug- 
gle. After  1812  he  was  returned  for 
the  borough  of  Bramber.  In  his  par- 
liamentary career  he  had  in  1^94  been 
opposed  to  the  war  with  France,  which 
caused  a  temporary  alienation  from 
Pitt,  but  did  not  long  interrupt  their 
mutual  regard;  he  had  been  in  favor 
of  Catholic  Emancipation  and  general- 
ly supported  Reform,  while  every  ben- 
evolent measure  found  in  him  an  ar- 
dent advocate.  He  was  one  of  the 
originators  of  the  Bible  Society,  of 
which  he  continued  a  warm  supporter, 
and  was  associated  with  various  other 
forms  of  Christian  philanthropic  effort. 
After  his  retirement  from  parliament 
he  occupied  a  house  with  large  grounds 
which  he  had  purchased  at  Highwood 
Hill,  in  the  suburbs  of  London.  His 
occupation  of  his  time  in  this  new  home, 
as  described  by  his  sons,  exhibits  an 
old  age  of  active  mental  employment. 
"  His  days  were  very  regularly  spent. 
He  rose  soon  after  seven,  spent  the 
first  hour  and  a  half  in  his  closet ;  then 
dressed,  hearing  his  reader  for  three 
quarters  of  an  hour,  and  by  half -past 


nine  met  his  household  for  family  wor- 
ship. At  this  he  read  a  portion  of  the 
Scriptures,  generally  of  the  New 
Testament,  in  course,  and  explained 
and  enforced  it,  often  with  a  natural 
and  glowing  eloquence,  always  with 
affectionate  earnestness  and  an  extra- 
ordinary knowledge  of  God's  word. 
After  family  prayers,  which  occupied 
about  half  an  hour,  he  never  failed  to 
sally  forth  for  a  few  minutes 

'To  take  the  air  and  hear  the  thrushes  sing.' 

He  enjoyed  this  stroll  exceedingly :  'A 
delightful  morning.  Walked  out  and 
saw  the  most  abundant  dew-drops  spark- 
ling in  the  sunbeams  on  the  gazon. 
How  it  calls  forth  the  devotional  feel- 
ings in  the  morning  when  the  mind  is 
vacant  from  worldly  business,  to  see 
all  nature  pour  forth,  as  it  were,  its 
song  of  praise  to  the  great  Creator  and 
Preserver  of  all  things !  I  love  to  re- 
peat Psalms  cm.,  civ.,  CXLV.,  etc.,  at  such 
a  season.'  His  habits  had  long  since 
been  formed  to  a  late  hour  of  break- 
fast. During  his  public  life  his  early 
hours  alone  were  undisturbed,  and  he 
still  thought  that  meeting  late  tended 
to  prolong  in  others  the  time  ojp  morn- 
ing prayor  and  meditation.  Breakfast 
was  still  prolonged  and  animated  by 
his  unwearied  powers  of  conversation, 
and  when  congenial  friends  were  gath- 
ered round  him,  their  discussions  lasted 
sometimes  till  noon.  From  the  break 
fast  room  he  went  till  post  time  to  his 
study,  where  he  was  commonly  employ- 
ed long  about  his  letters.  If  they 
were  finished  he  turned  to  some  other 
business,  never  enduring  to  be  idi,^  all 
the  day.  '  H.  is  a  man,'  he  says,  altei 
a  wholly  interrupted  morning,  'foi 


432 


WILLIAM  WILBEEFORCE. 


whom  I  feel  unfeigned  esteem  and  re- 
gard, but  it  quite  molests  me  to  talk 
for  a  whole  morning.  Nothing  done 
and  no  accession  of  intellect.'  Soon 
after  his  retirement  he  was  invited  as 
an  idle  man  to  an  amateur  concert. 
1  What !'  he  exclaimed,  '  music  in  a 
morning  ?  Why  it  would  be  as  bad  as 
dram -drinking.'  Yet  his  love  for  music 
was  as  strong  as  ever.  .  .  About  three 
o'clock,  when  the  post  was  gone,  he 
sallied  forth  into  the  garden,  humming 
often  to  himself,  in  the  gladness  of 
his  heart,  some  favorite  tune,  alone,  or 
in  the  company  of  some  few  friends,  or 
with  his  reader.  Here  he  would  pace 
up  and  down  some  sheltered  sunny 
walk,  rejoicing  especially  in  one  which 
had  been  formed  for  him  by  a  son,  and 
was  called  ever  after,  with  some  hint 
of  affection,  by  his  name. 

"  Who  that  ever  joined  him  in  it  can- 
not see  him  as  he  walked  round  his 
gardens  at  Highwood  ?  Now  in  anima- 
ted and  even  playful  conversation,  and 
then  drawing  from  his  copious  pockets 
(to  contain  Dalrymple's  State  Papers 
was  their  standard  measure)  some  fa- 
vorite volume  or  other,  a  Psalter,  a 
Horace,  a  Shakespeare,  or  Cowper,  and 
reading,  and  reciting,  or  'refreshing'  pas. 
sages ;  and  then  catching  at  long-stored 
flower-leaves  as  the  wind  blew  them 
from  the  pages,  or  standing  before  a 
favorite  gum  cistus  to  repair  the  loss. 
Then  he  would  point  out  the  harmony 
of  the  tints,  the  beauties  of  the  pencil- 
ling, the  perfection  of  the  coloring,  and 
run  up  all  into  those  ascriptions  of 
praise  to  the  Almighty,  which  were 


ever  welling  forth  from  his  grateful 
heart.  He  loved  flowers  with  all  the 
simple  delight  of  childhood.  He  stayed 
out  till  near  dinner,  which  was  never 
after  five,  and  early  in  the  evening  lay 
down  for  an  hour  and  a  half.  He 
would  then  rise  for  a  new  term  of  ex- 
istence, and  sparkle  through  a  long 
evening,  to  the  astonishment  of  thost, 
who  expected,  at  his  time  of  life,  to  see 
his  mind  and  spirits  flag,  even  if  his 
strength  was  not  exhausted.  The 
whole  evening  was  seldom  spent  in 
conversation,  for  he  had  commonly 
some  book  in  '  family  reading,'  which 
was  a  text  for  multiplied  ^digressions 
full  of  incident  and  illustration." 

Days  passed  like  these,  were  the  pre- 
lude to  a  happy  death.  After  a  resi- 
dence at  Bath  in  the  early  summer  of 
1833,  he  visited  London  to  occupy  for 
a  few  days  a  house  which  had  been 
placed  at  his  disposal  in  Cadogan 
Place,  Sloane  street.  Parliament  was 
then  in  session,  engaged  in  the  passage 
of  the  final  Emancipation  Act.  "  Thank 
God,"  said  he,  on  hearing  of  the  success 
of  the  measure,  "  that  I  should  have  lir- 
ed  to  witness  a  day  in  which  England 
is  willing  to  give  twenty  millions  ster- 
ing  for  the  abolition  of  slavery."  He 
survived  but  a  few  days  longer,  dying 
with  words  of  Christian  resignation  on 
his  lips,  on  the  morning  of  July  29th, 
in  the  seventy-fourth  year  of  his  age. 
His  remains  were  interred  with  public 
honors  in  Westminister  Abbey,  in  the 
north  transept,  by  the  side  of  the  graves 
of  Pitt,  Fox  and  Canning,  where  a  sta- 
tue has  been  erected  to  his  memory. 


Johnsen,  Wilson  %:  Go.  Publishers  New  York 


4:34 


GEOEvjE 


particularly  afterwards  as  engine-man, 
he  devoted  himself  so  assiduously  and 
30  successfully  to  the  study  of  the  en- 
gine and  its  gearing — taking  the  ma- 
chine to  pieces  in  his  leisure  hours  for 
the  purpose  of  cleaning  and  mastering 
its  various  parts — that  he  very  soon 
acquired  a  thorough  practical  -knowl- 
edge of  its  construction  and  mode  of 
working,  and  thus  he  very  rarely  need- 
ed to  call  to  his  aid  the  engineer  of  the 
colliery.  His  engine  became  a  sort  of 
pet  with  him,  and  he  was  never  weary 
of  watching  and  inspecting  it  with 
devoted  admiration." 

At  this  time  he  was  ^wholly  unedu- 
cated. There  was  a  night-school  in  the 
village,  kept  by  a  poor  teacher,  and 
this  school  he  determined  to  attend. 
He  took  a  particular  fancy  to  figures, 
and  improved  his  hours  by  the  engine- 
side  in  solving  the  problems  set  him 
by  his  master,  and  working  out  new 
ones  of  his  own.  By  the  time  he  was 
nineteen  he  had  learnt  under  the  vil- 
lage dominie  to  read  correctly,  and 
"  was  proud  to  be  able  to  write  his 
own  name." 

At  the  age  of  twenty,  when  he  was 
acting  as  brakesman  of  an  engine  at 
Black  Callerton,  his  wages  being  about 
eighteen  shillings  a  week,  he  formed  an 
attachment  for  a  respectable  young 
woman,  named  Fanny  Henderson,  a 
servant  in  a  neighboring  farm-house. 
His  means,  however,  not  permitting 
him  to  marry,  he  began  to  make  and 
mend  the  shoes  of  his  fellow  workmen, 
an  occupation  by  which  he  contrived  to 
save  his  first  guinea.  He  expressed  an 
opinion  to  a  friend,  that  he  was  "  now 
a  rich  man,"  and  tht  next  year  he  mar- 
ried Fanny  Henderson,  and  furnished 


a  small  cottage  at  Willington  Quay, 
near  Wallsend,  where  he  got  an  ap- 
pointment as  brakesman  to  an  engine 
It  was  here  that  his  son,  Robert,  was 
born,  and  within  a  twelvemonth  after, 
Mrs.  Stephenson  died,  to  the  great  af- 
fliction of  her  husband,  who  long  con 
tinued  to  cherish  her  memory. 

At  this  time  all  was  distress  with 
him ;  his  father  met  with  an  accident, 
by  which  he  Idfb  his  eyesight,  and  was 
otherwise  injured ;  the  condition  of 
the  working  classes  was  very  discour- 
aging, in  consequence  of  high  prices 
and  heavy  taxation;  George  himself 
was  drawn  for  the  militia, -and  had  to 
pay  a  heavy  sum  of  money  to  provide 
a  substitute.  He  was  almost  in  despair 
and  contemplated  the  idea  of  emigrat- 
ing to  America.  "  But  his  poverty  pre- 
vented him  from,  prosecuting  the  idea, 
and  rooted  him  to  the  place  where  he 
afterwards  worked  out  his  career." 

Conscious  of  the  disadvantages  aris- 
ing from  want  of  instruction,  George 
Stephenson  determined  that  his  boy 
should  be  taught,  as  soon  as  he  was  of 
an  age  to  go  to  school.  Many  years 
after,  speaking  of  the  resolution  which 
he  thus  early  formed,  he  said,  "  In  the 
earlier  period  of  my  career,  when  Rob- 
ert was  a  little  boy,  I  saw  how  deficient 
I  was  in  education,  and  I  made  up  my 
mind  that  he  should  not  labor  under 
the  same  defect,  but  that  I  would  put 
him  to  a  good  school,  and  give  him  a 
liberal  training.  I  was,  however,  a  poor 
man ;  and  how  do  you  think  I  manag- 
ed ?  I  betook  myself  to  mending  my 
neighbors'  clocks  and  watches  at  night, 
after  my  daily  labor  was  done,  and  thus 
I  procured  the  means  of  educating  my 


son. 


GEOEGE  STEPHENSOK 


435 


But  his  career  was  now  about  to  take 
a  turn.  He  had  marked  the  details  of 
the  machine  under  his  guidance,  and 
he  only  wanted  an  opportunity  to  turn 
his  practical  knowledge  to  account. 
That  opportunity  soon  presented  itself. 
The  lessees  of  the  Killing  worth  Colliery 
had  re-erected  an  engine,  made  by  Smea- 
ton,  for  the  purpose  of  pumping  the 
water  from  the  shaft.  From  some  cause 
or  other  the  engine  failed.  Nobody 
could  make  it  work,  and  George  Ste- 
phenson,  like  many  others  in  the  neigh- 
borhood, had  examined  it.  One  Sat- 
urday afternoon  he  went  over  to  the 
High  Pit  to  examine  the  engine  more 
carefully  than  he  had  yet  done.  He 
had  been  turning  the  subject  over  in 
his  mind;  and  after  a  long  examina- 
tion, he  seemed  to  satisfy  himself  as  to 
the  cause  of  the  failure.  Kit  Heppel, 
who  was  a  sinker  at  the  pit,  said  to  him : 
"  Weel,  George,  what  do  you  mak'  o' 
her  ?  Do  you  think  you  could  do 
anything  to  improve  her?"  "Man," 
said  George  in  reply,  "I  could  alter 
her  and  make  her  draw ;  in  a  week's 
time  from  this  I  could  send  you  to  the 
bottom."  Forthwith  Heppel  reported 
this  conversation  to  Ralph  Dods,  the 
head  viewer ;  and  Dods,  being  now 
quite  in  despair,  and  hopeless  of  suc- 
ceeding with  the  engine,  determined  to 
give  George's  skill  a  trial.  The  next 
day  Stephenson  entered  on  his  labors. 
The  engine  was  taken  entirely  to  pieces. 
The  repairs  occupied  about  four  days, 
and  by  the  following  Wednesday  the 
engine  was  carefully  put  together  again 
and  set  to  work.  It  was  kept  pump- 
ing all  Thursday,  and  by  the  Fri- 
day afternoon  the  pit  was  cleared  of 
water,  and  tht>  workmen  were  "sent 


to   the   bottom,"   as   Stephenson  had 
promised. 

George  Stephenson  received  ten 
pounds  as  a  present,  and  was  appoint 
ed  engine-man  to  the  Killingworth  en 
gine  at  good  wages.  His  skill  as  an 
engine  doctor  became  noised  abroad, 
and  he  was  called  on  to  cure  all  the 
old,  wheezy  and  ineffective  pumping 
machines  in  the  district.  He  soon  beat 
the  "regular"  engineers,  though  they 
treated  him  as  a  quack.  In  1812,  the 
colliery  engine-wright  at  Killingworth 
having  been  accidentally  killed,  George 
Stephenson  was  appointed  to  succeed 
him  at  a  salary  of  one  hundred  pounds 
a  year,  and  the  use  of  a  horse — and  now 
he  was  on  the  high  road  to  fortune. 

The  idea  of  applying  steam  power 
to  the  propulsion  of  wheel  carriages 
had  occupied  the  attention  of  many 
inventors  from  the  time  of  Watt. 
The  earlier  notions  all  resolved  them- 
selves into  its  application  to  carriages 
on  ordinary  roads.  Trevethick  appears 
to  have  been  the  first  to  put  together 
the  two  ideas  of  the  steam  horse  and 
the  iron  way.  In  1804,  he  constructed 
an  engine  to  pass  along  a  tram-way  at 
Merthyr  Tydvil,  but  although  it  suc- 
ceeded in  dragging  after  it  several 
wagons  containing  ten  tons  of  iron,  at 
the  rate  of  five  miles  an  hour,  this 
engine  proved  a  failure,  and  was  speed- 
ily abandoned  in  consequence  chiefly 
of  the  imaginary  notion,  which  Treve- 
thick adopted,  that  a  smooth-wheeled 
engine  would  not  "  grip  "  or  "  bite," 
upon  a  smooth  rail.  Trevethick  sub- 
sequently made  two  other  engines  on 
the  same  principle  for  Mr.  Blackett, 
the  owner  of  the  Wylam  Colliery,  on 
which  George  Stephenson  was  born 


436 


GEORGE  STEPHENSON. 


The  first  of  these  was  never  used  at 
all,  and  the  second,  having  been  pnt 
upon  the  road  with  infinite  labor, 
would  not  move  an  inch,  but  flew  to 
pieces  when  the  machinery  was  set  in 
motion.  This  was  in  1812.  In  1813, 
Mr.  Blackett,  continuing  his  experi- 
ments, built  an  engine  of  his  own, 
which  "  crept  along  at  a  snail's  pace, 
sometimes  taking  six  hours  to  travel 
the  five  miles  down  to  the  loading 
place.  It  was  also  very  apt  to  get  off 
the  rail  and  then  it  stuck.  On  these 
occasions  the  horses  had  to  be  sent  out 
to  drag  on  the  wagons  as  before." 
Whilst  Mr.  Blackett  was  thus  experi- 
menting, to  the  amusement  of  his 
friends,  who  pronounced  that  his  ma- 
chines would  "never  answer,"  George 
Stephenson  was  directing  his  attention 
to  the  best  means  of  effecting  some 
economy  in  the  haulage  of  coal  from 
the  Killingworth  Collieries  to  the  river 
side.  The  high  price  of  corn  rendered 
the  maintenance  of  horses  very  expen- 
sive, and  with  a  view  to  save  the  keep 
of  as  many  as  possible,  he  laid  down 
inclined  planes,  where  the  nature  of 
the  ground  permitted,  and  let  down 
his  loaded  coal  wagons  by  a  rope,  of 
which  the  other  end  was  attached  to  a 
train  of  empty  wagons  on  a  parallel 
incline.  The  rope  ran  upon  wheels 
fastened  to  the  train-road. 

But  this  plan  did  not  satisfy  him. 
He  recurred  to  the  idea  of  a  locomo- 
tive, and  determined  to  go  over  to 
Wylam  and  see  Mr.  Blackett's  "Black 
Billy."  After  mastering  its  arrange- 
ments, he  declared  "  his  full  conviction 
that  he  could  make  a  better  engine — 
one  that  would  draw  steadier  and  work 
more  cheaply  and  effectively."  He 


proceeded  to  bring  the  subject  un 
der  the  notice  of  the  Killingworth 
lessees,  and  Lord  Ravensworth,  the 
principal  partner,  having  formed  a 
very  favorable  opinion  of  him,  author- 
ized him  to  construct  a  locomotive,  and 
promised  to  advance  the  money  for  the 
purpose.  In  defiance  of  the  theoretical 
difficulty  which  had  possessed  the 
mind  of  Trevethick,  he  made  all  its 
wheels  smooth,  and  it  was  the  first  en 
gine  which  was  so  constructed.  It  was 
placed  on  the  Killingworth  railroad, 
on  the  25th  of  July,  1814,  and  its 
powers  were  tried  the  same  day.  "  On 
an  ascending  gradient  of  ^1  in  450,  it 
succeeded  in  drawing  after  it  eight 
loaded  carriages,  of  thirty  tons  weight, 
at  about  four  miles  an  hour ;  and  foi 
some  time  after  it  continued  regularly 
at  work." 

When  this  engine  was  put  upon  the 
rail,  Mr.  Stephenson  was  almost  the 
only  person  who  had  implicit  faith  in 
the  contrivance.  Mr.  Blackett's  engines 
at  Wylam  were  believed  to  be  working 
at  a  loss ;  the  machines  tried  elsewhere 
had  proved  failures,  and  had  been 
abandoned;  and  even  the  colliery 
owners,  who  were  supposed  to  be  the 
only  persons  who  could  possibly  profit 
by  them,  were  not  generally  favorable 
to  locomotive  traction,  and  were  not 
given  to  encourage  experiments.  "  Ste- 
phenson alone  remained  in  the  field, 
after  all  the  improvers  and  inventors 
of  the  locomotive  had  abandoned  it  in 
despair.  He  continued  to  entertain 
the  most  confident  expectations  as  to 
its  eventual  success.  He  even  went  so 
far  as  to  say  that  it  would  yet  super 
sede  every  other  tractive  power." 

His  whole  thoughts  were  now  em 


GEORGE  STEPHEIS^SOK 


437 


ployed  on  the  perfecting  of  this  ma- 
chine, and  of  the  road  on  which  it  was 
to  work,  for  he  was  in  the  habit  of  re- 
garding them  as  one,  speaking  of  the 
rail  and  the  wheel  as  "  man  and  wife." 
He  began  by  improving  the  joints  of 
the  rails,  then  by  devising  a  new  chair 
for  them  to  rest  on.  He  next  turned 
his  attention  to  the  wheels  of  the  loco- 
motive, making  them  lighter,  as  well 
as  more  durable.  He  afterwards  in- 
vented a  "steam  spring,"  which  re- 
mained some  time  in  use,  until  super- 
seded by  a  better  article.  Subse- 
quenly  he  studied  the  question  of  re- 
sistance, which  included  the  whole 
subject  of  gradients,  and  on  which  he 
arrived  at  the  conclusion,  from  which 
he  never  afterwards  deviated,  that  the 
power  of  the  locomotive  was  best 
adapted  to  level  roads. 

Several  years  passed  away  before 
Geoi'ge  Stephenson  obtained  another 
opportunity.  During  that  time  his 
locomotive  engine  was  in  daily  use  on 
the  Killingworth  railway,  without  ex- 
citing much  attention,  But  in  1819, 
the  owners  of  the  Hetton  Colliery,  in 
Durham,  determined  to  have  their 
wagon- way  constructed  for  locomotive 
engines.  They  invited  George  Ste- 
phenson  to  act  as  their  engineer;  and 
on  the  18th  of  November,  1822,  he 
opened  a  line  of  railway  of  about  eight 
miles  long,  from  the  Hetton  Colliery 
to  its  shipping-place  upon  the  Wear, 
on  which  five  locomotives  of  his  own 
construction  were  worked,  capable  of 
traveling  at  the  rate  of  four  miles  an 
hour,  and  of  dragging  a  train  of  seven- 
teen coal- wagons  weighing  about  sixty- 
four  tons. 

In  the  year  1821,  Mr.  Pease  of  Dar- 


lington, and  other  gentlemen  of  the 
vicinity,  obtained  an  act  of  parlia 
ment,  enabling  them  "  to  make  a  rail- 
way, or  tram-road,  from  Stockton  fr 
Witton  Park  Colliery  (by  Darling 
ton)."  The  object  was  "  to  facilitate 
.the  conveyance  of  coal,  iron,  lime,  corn 
and  other  commodities ; "  and  the  pro- 
moters purposed  to  work  the  railway 
"  with  men  and  horses,  or  otherwise." 
It  was  in  the  winter  of  1821,  that 
George  Stephenson,  having  heard  of 
this  project,  went  over  to  Darlington, 
with  a  letter  from  Mr.  Lambert,  the 
manager  at  Killingworth,  and  intro- 
duced himself  to  Mr.  Pease.  The  plans 
of  the  road  were  undetermined.  Ste- 
phenson strongly  persuaded  him  to 
adopt  a  railway  in  preference  to  a 
tram-road,  and  a  locomotive  engine  in 
preference  to  horse  power.  Mr.  Pease 
communicated  these  ideas  to  the  di- 
rectors, who  asked  Stephenson  to  sur- 
vey the  country  for  them,  which  he  did 
in  company  with  his  son.  The  first 
rail  of  the  line  was  laid  on  the  23d  of 
May,  1822.  Shortly  after  this  date, 
Mr.  Pease  paid  a  visit  to  Killingworth, 
in  company  with  u  his  friend,"  Thomas 
Richardson  (the  then  head  of  the  firm 
of  Richardson,  Overend,  Gurney  & 
Co.,  in  Lombard  Street),  for  the  pur- 
pose  of  examining  the  locomotive. 

Stephenson  soon  had  it  brought  up, 
made  the  gentlemen  mount  it,  and 
showed  them  its  paces.  Harnessing  it 
to  a  train  of  loaded  wagons,  he  ran  it 
along  the  railroad,  and  so  thoroughly 
satisfied  his  visitors  of  its  powers  and 
capabilities,  that  from  that  day  Edward 
Pease  was  a  declared  supporter  of  the 
locomotive  engine.  In  preparing,  in 
1823,  the  amended  Stockton  and  Dar 


GEOKGE   STEPHENSOK 


i  ngton  Act,  at  Mr.  Stephenson's  urgent 
request  Mr.  Pease  had  a  clause  insert- 
ed, taking  power  to  work  the  railway 
by  means  of  locomotive  engines,  and 
to  employ  them  for  the  haulage  of 
passengers  as  well  as  of  merchandise ; 
and  Mr.  Pease  gave  a  further  and  still 
stronger  proof  of  his  conviction  as  to 
the  practical  value  of  the  locomotive, 
by  entering  into  a  partnership  with 
Mr.  Stephenson,  in  the  following  year, 
for  the  establishment  of  a  locomotive 
foundry  and  manufactory  in  the  town 
of  Newcastle — the  northern  centre  of 
the  English  railroad  system.  The 
second  Stockton  and  Darlington  Act 
was  obtained  in  the  session  of  1823, 
not,  however,  without  opposition.  Mr. 
Stephenson  was  regularly  appointed 
the  company's  engineer,  at  a  salary  of 
three  hundred  pounds  per  annum,  and 
he  forthwith  removed  with  his  family 
from  Killingworth  to  Darlington. 

The  Stockton  and  Darlington  rail- 
way was  opened  for  traffic  on  the  27th 
of  September,  1825,  and  was  the  ear- 
liest public  highway  of  the  kind.  Mr. 
Stephenson  himself  drove  the  first  en- 
gine. The  train  consisted  of  six  wagons 
loaded  with  coals  and  flour ;  after  these 
came  a  passenger-coach,  occupied  by  the 
directors  and  their  friends ;  then  twen- 
ty-one wagons,  fitted  up  for  other  pas- 
sengers, and  lastly,  six  wagon-loads  of 
coals,  making  in  all  thirty-eight  vehi- 
cles. The  train  went  at  a  steady  pace 
of  from  four  to  six  miles  an  hour,  and 
its  arrival  in  Stockton  excited  deep  in- 
terest and  admiration. 

From  the  very  outset,  this  railway 
was  most  successful.  The  traffic  on 
which  the  company  had  estimated  their 
profit  was  greatly  exceeded.  Instead 


i  of  sending  ten  thousand  tons  of  coal  a 
year  to  Stockton,  as  they  had  calcu 
lated,  their  shipments  in  a  few  yearp 
were  above  five  hundred  thousand  tons, 
and  have  since  far  surpassed  that 
amount.  At  first,  passengers  were  not 
thought  of,  but  they  wanted  to  be 
taken,  and,  by  George  Stephenson'a 
advice,  passenger-carriages  were  placed 
upon  the  line.  One  striking  result  of 
this  railway  was  the  creation  of  the 
town  of  Middlesborough-on-Tees. 

When  the  railway  was  opened  in 
1825,  the  site  of  this  future  metropolis 
of  Cleveland  was  occupied  by  a  solitary 
{arm-house  and  its  out-buildings.  All 
round  was  pasture-land  or  mud-banks ; 
scarcely  another  house  was  within  sight. 
But  when  the  coal  export  trade,  foster- 
ed by  the  halfpenny  maximum  rate  im 
posed  by  the  Legislature,  seemed  likely 
to  attain  a  gigantic  growth,  and  it  was 
found  that  the  accommodation  furnish- 
ed at  Stockton  was  insufficient,  Mr. 
Edward  Pease,  joined  by  a  few  of  his 
Quaker  friends,  bought  about  five  or 
six  hundred  acres  of  land,  five  miles 
lower  down  the  river — the  site  of  the 
modern  Middlesborough — for  the  pur- 
pose of  forming  a  new  seaport  for  the 
shipment  of  coals  brought  to  the  Tees 
by  the  railway.  The  line  was  accord- 
ingly shortly  extended  thither,  docks 
were  excavated,  a  town  sprang  up, 
churches,  chapels,  and  schools  were 
built,  with  a  custom-house,  mechanics' 
institute,  banks,  ship-building  yards, 
and  iron  factories ;  and  in  a  few  years 
the  port  of  Middlesborough  became 
one  of  the  most  important  on  the 
north-east  coast  of  England.  In  the 
year  1845.  fifty  thousand  five  hundred 
and  forty  eight  tons  of  coals  were  ship 


GEOEGE  STEPHE^SOK 


ped  in  the  nine-acre  dock,  by  means  of 
the  ten  coal-drops  abutting  thereupon. 
In  about  ten  years,  a  busy  population 
of  about  six  thousand  persons  (since 
swelled  into  fifteen  thousand)  occupied 
the  site  of  the  original  farm-house. 
More  recently,  the  discovery  (by  Mr. 
John  Phillips)  of  vast  stores  of  iron- 
stone in  the  Cleveland  Hills,  close  ad- 
joining Middlesborough,  has  tended 
still  more  rapidly  to  augment  the  pop- 
ulation and  increase  the  commercial 
importance  of  the  place.  Iron  furnaces 
are  now  blazing  along  the  Vale  of 
Cleveland,  and  new  smelting- works  are 
rising  up  in  all  directions,  fed  by  the 
railway  which  brings  to  them  their 
supplies  of  fuel  from  the  Durham  coal- 
fields. 

A  line  of  railway,  to  be  worked  by 
horses,  had  been  projected  from  Liver- 
pool to  Manchester,  in  1821 ;  the  op- 
position, however,  was  so  powerful, 
that  the  idea  was  laid  aside ;  in  1823, 
it  was  again  proposed,  to  be  again 
dropped;  in  1824,  it  was  once  more 
revived,  and  the  promoters  determined 
to  send  a  deputation  to  Killingworth  to 
see  George  Stephenson's  engine.  Being 
amply  satisfied  with  what  they  saw, 
they  offered  him  the  post  of  engineer 
to  lay  out  their  line.  In  the  face  of 
extraordinary  difficulties,  he  proceeded 
to  make  a  survey  of  the  country.  The 
bill  for  the  railway  went  into  commit- 
tee of  the  House  of  Commons  on  the 
21st  of  March,  1825.  It  was  vehe- 
mently opposed  by  the  canal  compa- 
nies, the  land-owners,  and  almost  every 
one  interested. 

"When  I  went  to  Liverpool,"  says 
Stephen  son, "  to  plan  a  line  from  thence 
fco  Manchester,  I  pledged  myself  to  the 


directors  to  attain  a  speed  of  ten  milea 
an  hour.  I  said  I  had  no  doubt  the 
locomotive  might  be  made  to  go  much 
faster,  but  that  we  had  better  be  mo 
derate  at  the  beginning.  The  direc- 
tors said  I  was  quite  right ;  for  that 
if,  when  they  went  to  parliament,  I 
talked  of  going  at  a  greater  rate  than 
ten  miles  an  hour,  I  should  put  a  cross 
upon  the  concern.  It  was  not  an  easy 
task  for  me  to  keep  the  engine  down 
to  ten  miles  an  hour,  but  it  must  be 
done,  and  I  did  my  best.  I  had  to 
place  myself  in  that  most  unpleasant 
of  all  positions — the  witness-box  of  a 
parliamentary  committee.  I  was  not 
long  in  it  before  I  began  to  wish  for  a 
hole  to  creep  out  at !  I  could  not  find 
words  to  satisfy  either  the  committee 
or  myself.  I  was  subjected  to  the 
cross-examination  of  eight  or  ten  bar. 
risters,  purposely,  as  far  as  possible,  to 
bewilder  me.  Some  member  of  the 
committee  asked  if  I  was  a  foreigner, 
and  another  hinted  that  I  was  mad. 
But  I  put  up  with  every  rebuff,  and 
went  on  with  my  plans,  determined 
not  to  be  put  down." 

The  great  difficulty  in  making  a  rail 
way  from  Liverpool  to  Manchester  was 
the  passage  across  Chat-Moss — a  bog 
about  four  miles  broad  and  more  than 
thirty-feet  deep.  Mr.  (afterward  Baron) 
Alderson  described  it  to  the  committee 
as  "  an  immense  mass  of  pulp,  and  noth- 
ing else.  It  actually  rises  in  height," 
he  said,  "from  rain,  swelling  like  a 
sponge,  and  sinks  again  in  dry  weather. 
If  a  boring  instrument  is  put  into  it, 
it  sinks  immediately  by  its  own  weight. 
Who  but  Mr.  Stephenson,"  asked  Mr. 
Alderson,  "who  but  Mr.  Stephenson 
would  have  thought  of  carrying  a  rail 


GEORGE  STEPHENSOJV. 


way  across  Chat-Moss  ? "  "  It  was,"  he 
said,  "  ignorance  inconceivable ;  it  was 
perfect  madness.  The  man  had  ap- 
plied himself  to  a  subject  of  which 
he  had  no  knowledge,  and  to  which 
he  had  no  science  to  apply!"  Pro- 
fessed engineers  were  called  who  con- 
firmed these  opinions.  No  one  was 
found  to  support  Mr.  Stephenson,  and 
ultimately,  although  the  committee  de- 
clared the  preamble  to  be  proved  by  a 
majority  of  only  one  (thirty-seven  to 
thirty-six),  they  refused  the  company 
compulsory  power  to  take  land  to  make 
the  railway;  and  thus  the  bill  was 
virtually  lost. 

But  -the  necessity  of  a  new  line  of 
communication  between  Liverpool  and 
Manchester  had  been  established,  and 
the  Liverpool  merchants  were  deter- 
mined to  obtain  it.  They  went  to  par- 
liament in  the  next  session  for  another 
bill,  which  appears  to  have  been  of  a 
less  ambitious  character,  and  to  have 
been  framed  upon  the  precedent  of 
the  Stockton  and  Darlington.  In  the 
evidence  before  the  House  they  avoid- 
ed the  case  of  Chat-Moss,  and  proposed 
to  work  their  railway  by  the  applica- 
tion of  horse-power.  The  act  was 
granted,  and  Mr.  Stephenson  at  once 
made  arrangements  to  commence  the 
works.  He  began  with  the  "  impossi- 
ble"— to  do  that  which  the  most  dis- 
tinguished engineers  of  the  day  had 
declared  that  no  man  in  his  senses 
would  undertake  to  do,  namely,  to 
make  a  road  across  the  Chat-Moss. 

The  draining  of  the  Moss  was  com- 
menced in  June,  1826.  It  was  indeed 
a  most  formidable  undertaking;  and 
it  has  been  well  observed  that  to  carry 
fi  railway  along,  under,  or  over  such  a 


material,  could  never  have  been  con 
templated  by  any  ordinary  mind.     Mr 
Stephenson  proceeded  to  form  the  line 
in   the   following   manner: — He   had 
deep  drains  cut  about  five  yards  apart, 
and   when   the   moss    between    those 
drains  had  become   perfectly  dry,  it 
was  used  to   form   the   embankment 
where  necessary;  and  so  well  did  it 
succeed,  that  only  about  four  times  the 
quantity  was  required  that  would  have 
been  necessary  on  hard  ground.  Where 
the  road  was  to  be  on  a  level,  drains 
were  cut  on  each  side  of  the  intended 
line,  by  which,   intersected  by  occa- 
sional cross  drains,  the  upper  part  of 
the   moss  became  dry  and   tolerably 
firm ;  and  on  this  hurdles  were  placed, 
either  in  double  or  single  layers,  as 
the  case  required,  four  feet  broad  and 
nine  feet  long,  covered   with    heath. 
The  ballast  was  then  placed  on  these 
floating   hurdles ;    longitudinal    bear- 
ings, as  well  as  cross  sleepers,  were 
used  to  support  the  rails  where  neces- 
sary, and  the  whole  was  thoroughly 
drained.     In  the  cutting  the  work  had 
to  be  accomplished  by  drainage  alone. 
The  only  advantage  in  favor  of  these 
operations  was,  that  the  surface  of  the 
moss  was  somewhat  higher  than  the 
surrounding    country,   which   circum- 
stance partially  assisted  the  drainage 
In  proceeding  with  these  operations, 
however,  difficulties  from  time  to  time 
presented  themselves,  which  were  over- 
come with  singular  sagacity  by  the  en- 
gineer.    Thus,  when  the  longitudinal 
drains  were  first  cut  along  either  side 
of  the  intended  railway,  the  oozy  fluid 
of  the  bog  poured  in,  threatening  in 
many  places  to  fill  it  up  entirely,  and 
bring  it  back  to  the  original  level.  Mi 


GEOKGE  STEPHENSON. 


441 


Stephenson  then  hit  upon  the  follow- 
ing expedient.  He  sent  up  to  Liver- 
pool and  Manchester  and  bought  up  all 
the  old  tallow  casks  that  could  be 
found;  and,  digging  out  the  trench 
anew,  he  had  the  casks  inserted  along 
the  bottom,  their  ends  thrust  into  each 
other,  thus  keeping  up  the  continuity 
of  the  drain.  The  pressure  of  the  bog, 
however,  on  both  sides  of  the  casks,  as 
well  as  from  beneath,  soon  forced  them 
out  of  position,*  and  the  line  of  casks 
lay  unequally  along  the  surface.  They 
were  then  weighted  with  clay  for  the 
purpose  of  keeping  them  down.  This 
expedient  proved  successful,  and  the 
drainage  proceeded.  Then  the  moss 
between  the  two  lines  of  drains  was 
spread  over  with  hurdles,  sand  and 
«arth,  for  the  purpose  of  forming  the 
road.  But  it  was  soon  apparent  that 
this  weight  was  squeezing  down  the 
moss  and  making  it  rise  up  on  either 
side  of  the  line,  so  that  the  railway  lay 
as  it  were  in  a  valley,  and  formed  one 
huge  drain  across  the  bog.  To  correct 
this  defect,  the  moss  was  weighted  with 
hurdles  and  earth  to  the  extent  of  about 
thirty  feet  outside  of  the  line  on  either 
side,  by  which  means  the  adjacent  bog 
was  forced  down,  and  the  line  •  of  rail- 
way in  the  centre  was  again  raised  to 
its  proper  position.  By  these  expedi- 
ents, the  necessity  for  devising  which 
was  constantly  occurring,  and  as  con- 
stantly met  with  remarkable  success, 
the  work  went  forward,  and  the  rails 
were  laid  down. 

The  formation  of  the  heavy  embank- 
ment, above  referred  to,  on  the  edge  of 
the  moss,  presented  considerable  diffi 
culties.  The  weight  of  the  earth  pressed 
it  down  through  the  fluid,  and  thou- 
5f> 


sands  of  cubic  yards  were  engulfed  be- 
fore the  road  made  any  approach  to  the 
required  level.  For  weeks  the  stuff 
was  poured  in,  and  little  or  no  progress 
seemed  to  have  been  made.  The  di- 
rectors of  the  railway  became  alarmed, 
and  they  feared  that  the  evil  prognos- 
tications of  the  eminent  civil  engineers 
were  now  about  to  be  realized.  Mr. 
Stephenson  was  asked  for  his  opinion, 
and  his  invariable  answer  was,  "  We 
must  persevere."  And  so  he  went  on ; 
but  still  the  insatiable  bog  gaped  for 
more  material,  which  was  emptied  in 
truck-load  after  truck-load  without  any 
apparent  effect.  Then  a  special  meet- 
ing of  the  board  was  summoned,  and 
it  was  held  upon  the  spot,  to  determine 
whether  the  work  should  be  proceeded 
with  or  abandoned!  Mr.  Stephenson 
himself  afterwards  described  the  trans- 
action at  a  public  dinner  given  at  Bir- 
mingham, on  the  23d  of  December, 
1837,  on  the  occasion  of  a  piece  of 
plate  being  presented  to  his  son,  the 
engineer  of  the  London  and  Birming- 
ham railway.  He  related  the  anecdote, 
he  said,  for  the  purpose  of  impressing 
upon  the  minds  of  those  who  heard 
him  the  necessity  of  perseverance. 

"After  working  for  weeks  and 
weeks,"  said  he, "  in  filling  in  materials 
to  form  the  road,  there  did  not  yet  ap- 
pear to  be  the  least  sign  of  our  being 
able  to  raise  the  solid  embankment  one 
single  inch ;  in  short,  we  went  on  fill- 
ing in  without  the  slightest  apparent 
effect.  Even  my  assistants  began  to 
feel  uneasy,  and  to  doubt  of  the  suc- 
cess of  the  scheme.  The  directors,  too, 
spoke  of  it  as  a  hopeless  task,  and  at 
length  they  became  seriously  alarmed, 
so  much  so,  indeed,  that  a  board  meet- 


442 


GEOEGE  STEPHENSOK 


ing  was  held  on  Chat-Moss  to  decide 
whether  I  should  proceed  any  farther. 
They  had  previously  taken  the  opin- 
ions of  other  engineers,  who  reported 
unfavorably.  There  was  no  help  for 
it,  however,  but  to  go  on.  An  im- 
mense outlay  had  been  incurred,  and 
great  loss  would  have  been  occasioned 
had  the  scheme  been  then  abandoned 
and  the  line  taken  by  another  route. 
So  the  directors  were  compelled  to  al- 
low me  to  go  on  with  my  plans,  in  the 
ultimate  success  of  which  I  myself 
never  for  one  moment  doubted.  De- 
termined, therefore,  to  persevere  as  be- 
fore, I  ordered  the  works  to  be  carried 
on  vigorously ;  and,  to  the  surprise  of 
every  one  connected  with  the  under- 
taking, in  six  months  from  the  day  on 
which  the  board  had  held  its  special 
meeting  on  the  Moss,  a  locomotive  en- 
gine and  carriage  passed  over  the  very 
spot  with  a  party  of  the  directors' 
friends  on  their  way  to  dine  at  Man- 
chester." 

The  idea  which  bore  him  up  in  the 
face  of  so  many  adverse  opinions,  in 
assuming  that  a  safe  road  could  be 
formed  across  the  floating  bog,  was 
this :  that  a  ship  floated  in  water,  and 
that  the  moss  was  certainly  more  capa- 
ble of  supporting  such  a  weight  than 
water  was;  and  he  knew  that  if  he 
could  once  get  the  material  to  float  he 
would  succeed.  That  his  idea  was  cor- 
rect is  proved  by  the  fact  that  Chat- 
Moss  now  forms  the  very  best  part  of 
the  line  of  railway  between  Liverpool 
and  Manchester.  Nor  was  the  cost  of 
construction  of  this  part  of  the  line  ex- 
cessive. The  formation  of  the  road 
across  Chat-Moss  amounted  to  about 
twenty-eight  thousand  pounds,  Mr. 


Giles's  estimate  having  been  two  hun 
dred  and  seventy  thousand  pounds  ! 

The  directors  of  the  Liverpool  and 
Manchester  line  remained  long  unde 
cided  as  to  the  mode  in  which  it  should 
be  worked.  They  were  inundated  with 
projects,  but  no  one,  except  George 
Stephenson,  ever  pressed  upon  them 
the  locomotive  engine.  With  unwea- 
ried earnestness  he  continued  to  repre- 
sent his  favorite  machine  as  superior 
to  every  other  power;  till  at  length 
the  directors  determined  to  send  two 
professional  engineers  of  high  standing 
— Mr.  Walker,  of  Limehouse,  and  Mr. 
Rastrick,  of  Stourbridge — (to  visit  Dar- 
lington, and  report  upon  the  working 
of  that  machine.  Although  admitting 
with  apparent  candor  that  improve- 
ments were  to  be  anticipated  in  the 
locomotive  engine,  the  reporting  engi- 
neers clearly  had  no  faith  in  its  power 
nor  belief  in  its  eventual  success ;  and 
the  united  conclusion  of  the  two  was 
that, "  considering  the  question  in  every 
point  of  view— ^taking  two  lines  of  road 
as  now  forming,  and  having  reference 
to  economy,  dispatch,  safety  and  con- 
venience— our  opinion  is  that,  if  it  be 
resolved  to  make  the  Liverpool  and 
Manchester  railway  complete  at  once, 
so  as  to  accommodate  the  traffic,  or  a 
quantity  approaching  to  it,  the  station- 
ary reciprocating  system  is  the  best." 
And  in  order  to  carry  the  system  re- 
commended by  them  into  effect,  they 
proposed  to  divide  the  railroad  be- 
tween Liverpool  and  Manchester  into 
nineteen  stages  of  about  a  mile  and  a 
half  each,  with  twenty-one  engines 
fixed  at  the  different  points  to  work 
the  trains  forward.  Here  was  the  re- 
sult of  all  George  Stephenson's  labors ! 


GEOEGE  STEPHENSOK 


443 


The  two  best  practical  engineers  of  the 
day  concurred  in  reporting  against  the 
employment  of  his  locomotive !  Not 
a  single  professional  man  of  eminence 
could  be  found  to  coincide  with  him 
m  his  preference  for  locomotive  over 
fixed  engine  power.  Still  he  did  not 
despair.  With  the  profession  against 
him,  and  public  opinion  against  him — 
for  the  most  frightful  stories  were 
abroad  respecting  the  dangers,  the  un- 
sightliness  and  the  nuisance  which  the 
locomotive  would  create — Mr.  Stephen- 
son  held  to  his  purpose.  He  pledged 
himself  that,  if  time  were  given  him, 
he  would  construct  an  engine  that 
would  satisfy  their  requirements,  and 
prove  itself  capable  of  working  heavy 
loads  along  the  railway  with  speed, 
regularity  and  safety.  The  directors 
determined  to  offer  a  prize  of  five  hun- 
dred pounds  for  a  locomotive  engine  that 
would  work  under  certain  prescribed 
conditions.  On  the  day  appointed  for 
the  trial,  four  engines  came  upon  the 
ground,  and  Mr.  Stephenson's  "Rock- 
et "  carried  off  the  prize. 

With  the  success  of  the  "  Rocket " 
the  railway  system  may  be  said  to  have 
been  established.  On  the  1st  of  Jan- 
uary, 1830,  the  winning  engine,  with  a 
carnage  full  of  directors,  passed  over 
the  whole  of  Chat-Moss  and  the  greater 
part  of  the  road  between  Liverpool 
and  Manchester — a  double  triumph  to 
George  Stephenson — the  triumph  both 
of  his  road  and  of  his  locomotive.  On 
the  15th  of  September,  1830,  the  line 
was  opened ;  and,  as  in  the  case  of  the 
Stockton  and  Darlington  railway,  the 
commercial  results  were  decisive :  four 
hundred  passengers  a-day  were  calcu- 
lated on,  but  one  thousand  two  hun- 


dred were  carried  on  the  average,  at 
the  very  commencement,  and  the  num- 
ber soon  rose  to  half  a  million  yearly. 
The  land  near  the  line  increased  great- 
ly in  value,  and  even  Chat-Moss  itself 
became  studded  with  valuable  farms. 

After  the  Liverpool  and  Manchester 
line  was  made,  the  crop  of  railways 
soon  became  plentiful  as  blackberries. 
Among  the  first  with  which  the  name 
of  George  Stephenson  was  associated 
were  the  lines  from  Canterbury  to 
Whitstable,  and  from  Leicester  to 
Swannington.  The  great  work  of  the 
London  and  Birmingham,  now  called 
the  London  and  North-western,  was 
constructed  by  his  distinguished  son, 
although  in  his  remarkable  address,  on 
his  election  as  president  of  the  Insti- 
tution of  Civil  Engineers,  he  tells  us, 
with  appropriate  modesty,  that  "all 
he  knows  and  all  he  has  accomplished 
is  primarily  due  to  the  parent  whose 
memory  he  cherishes  and  reveres." 
Having,  in  conjunction  with  this  wor- 
thy inheritor  of  his  great  name,  suc- 
cessfully inaugurated  our  most  impor- 
tant railway  systems,  George  Stephen- 
son  retired  from  the  anxieties  of  pub- 
lic life.  Had  he  been  a  man  of  more 
ambitious  pretensions,  he  would  prob- 
ably have  remained  longer  in  the  field ; 
but,  having  lived  to  see  his  projects  car- 
ried into  effect  to  an  extent  far  beyond 
any  anticipations  he  could  possibly 
have  formed  at  the  outset,  he  wisely 
resolved  to  enjoy  the  sweets  of  do- 
mestic repose  for  the  remainder  of  his 
days,  and  withdrew  himself  to  the  en- 
joyment of  rural  pursuits.  There  were, 
however,  few  great  works  on  which  he 
was  not  consulted ;  and  he  may  be  re 
garded  as,  emphatically,  the  engineer 


444 


GEORGE  STEPHENSON. 


fco  whose  intelligence  and  perseverance 
is  due  the  introduction  of  railways 
into  England,  and  who  set  the  first 
example  in  that  country  of  works 
which  others  have  successfully  carried 
into  execution  throughout  the  world. 

From  his  earliest  period,  George  Ste- 
phenson,  inheriting  the  feelings  of  his 
father,  had  cherished  an  ardent  love  for 
natural  history.  The  latter  days  of  his 
life  were  spent  on  an  estate  in  Derby- 
shire, adjacent  to  the  Midland  railway, 
where,  engaged  in  horticulture  and  in 
farming,  he  lived  amongst  his  rabbits, 
dogs  and  birds.  He  died  of  an  inter- 
mittent fever,  contracted  amid  the 
noxious  atmosphere  of  one  of  his  forc- 
ing-houses, on  the  12th  of  August, 
1848,  at  the  not  very  advanced  age  of 
sixty-seven,  leaving  behind  him  the 
highest  character  for  simplicity,  kind- 
ness of  heart,  and  absolute  freedom 
from  all  sordidness  of  disposition.  His 
remains  were  followed  to  the  grave  by 
a  large  body  of  his  work-people,  by 
whom  he  was  greatly  admired  and  be- 
loved. They  remembered  him  as  a 
kind  master,  who  was  ever  ready  act- 
ively to  promote  all  measures  for  their 
moral,  physical  and  mental  improve- 
ment. The  body  was  interred  in  Trin- 
ity Church,  Chesterfield,  where  a  sim- 
ple tablet  marks  the  great  engineer's 
last  resting-place. 

A  statue,  by  Gibson,  which  the 
Liverpool  and  Manchester  and  Grand 
Junction  companies  had  commissioned, 
was  on  its  way  to  England  when  Ste- 
phenson's  death  occurred.  It  was 
placed  in  St.  George's  Hall,  Liverpool. 
A  full  length  statue  by  Bailey  was 
also  erected  a  few  years  later  in  the 
vestibule  of  the  London  and  North- 


western station,  in  Euston  Square.  A 
subscription  for  the  purpose  was  set 
on  foot  by  the  Society  of  Mechanical 
Engineers,  of  which  he  had  been  the 
founder  and  president.  A  few  adver 
tisements  were  inserted  in  the  papers 
inviting  subscriptions,  when  the  vo- 
luntary offerings  shortly  received  in 
eluded  an  average  of  two  shillings 
each  from  three  thousand,  one  hundred 
and  fifty  working  men,  who  embraced 
this  opportunity  of  doing  honor  to  their 
distinguished  fellow  workman. 

The  portrait  of  George  Stephenson 
exhibits  a  shrewd,  kind,  honest,  manly 
face.  His  fair,  clear  countenance  was 
ruddy,  and  seemingly  glowed  with 
health.  The  forehead  was  large  and 
high,  projecting  over  the  eyes;  and 
there  was  that  massive  breadth  across 
the  lower  part,  which  is  usually  ob- 
served in  men  of  eminent  constructive 
skill.  The  mouth  was  firmly  marked ; 
and  shrewdness  and  humor  lurked  there 
as  well  as  in  the  keen  grey  eye.  His 
frame  was  compact,  well-knit  and  rather 
spare.  His  hair  became  grey  at  an 
early  age,  and  towards  the  close  of  his 
life  it  was  of  a  pure  silky  whiteness. 
He  dressed  neatly  in  black,  wearing  a 
white  neckcloth ;  and  his  face,  his  per- 
son, and  his  deportment  at  once  ar- 
rested attention,  and  marked  the  gen- 
tleman. 

"  The  whole  secret  of  Mr.  Stephen- 
son's  success  in  life,"  says  his  biogra- 
pher, Mr.  Stiles,  in  his  concluding  chap- 
ter, summing  up  his  character,  "  was  his 
careful  improvement  of  time,  which  is 
the  rock  out  of  which  fortunes  are  carv- 
ed and  great  characters  formed.  He 
believed  in  genius  to  the  extent  that 
Buffon  did  when  he  said  that '  patience 


GEOKGE  STEPHENSON". 


443 


is  genius;'  or,  as  some  other  thinker 
put  it,  when  he  defined  genius  to  be 
the  power  of  making  efforts.  But  he 
never  would  have  it  that  he  was  a  ge- 
nius, or  that  he  had  done  anything 
which  other  men,  equally  laborious 
and  persevering  as  himself,  could  not 
nave  accomplished.  He  repeatedly 
said  to  the  young  men  about  him: 
'  Do  as  I  have  done — persevere ! '  He 
perfected  the  locomotive  by  always 
working  at  it  and  always  thinking 
about  it.  .  .  Whether  working  as 
a  brakeman  or  an  engineer,  his  mind 
was  always  full  of  the  work  in  hand. 
He  gave  himself  thoroughly  up  to  it. 
Like  the  painter,  he  might  say  that  he 
had  become  great '  by  neglecting  noth- 
ing.' Whatever  he  was  engaged  upon, 
he  was  as  careful  of  the  details  as  if 
each  were  itself  the  whole.  He  did 
all  thoroughly  and  honestly. 
He  was  ready  to  turn  his  hand  to  any- 
thing— shoes  and  clocks,  railways  and 
locomotives.  He  contrived  his  safety- 
lamp  with  the  object  of  saving  pit- 
men's lives,  and  perilled  his  own  life 
in  testing  it.  Many  men  knew  far 
more  than  he;  but  none  was  more 
ready  forthwith  to  apply  what  he  did 
know  to  practical  purposes.  .  .  In 
his  deportment,  he  was  simple,  mod- 
est and  unassuming,  but  always  man- 
ly. He  was  frank  and  social  in  spirit. 
When  a  humble  workman,  he  had  care- 
fully preserved  his  sense  of  self-respect. 
His  companions  looked  up  to  him,  and 
his  example  was  worth  even  more  to 
many  of  them  than  books  or  schools. 
His  devoted  love  of  knowledge  made 
his  poverty  respectable,  and  adorned 
his  humble  calling.  When  he  rose  to 
a  more  elevated  station  and  associated 


with  men  of  the  highest  position  and 
influence  in  Britain,  he  took  his  place 
amongst  them  with  perfect  self-posses- 
sion. 

"About  the  beginning  of  1847,  Mr. 
Stephenson  was  requested  to  state 
what  were  his  '  ornamental  initials,'  in 
order  that  they  might  be  added  to  his 
name  in  the  title  of  a  work  proposed 
to  be  dedicated  to  him.  His  reply  was 
characteristic:  'I  have  to  state,'  said 
he,  'that  I  have  no  flourishes  to  my 
name,  either  before  or  after;  and  I 
think  it  will  be  as  well  if  you  merely 
say  "  George  Stephenson."  It  is  true, 
that  I  am  a  Belgian  knight,  but  I  do 
not  wish  to  have  any  use  made  of  it. 
I  have  had  the  offer  of  knighthood  of 
my  own  country  made  to  me  several 
times,  but  would  not  have  it.  I  have 
been  invited  to  become  a  Fellow  of 
the  Royal  Society,  and  also  of  the  Civil 
Engineers'  Society,  but  objected  to  the 
empty  additions  to  my  name.  I  am  a 
member  of  the  Geological  Society ;  and 
I  have  consented  to  become  president 
of,  I  believe,  a  highly  respectable  Me- 
chanics' Institution  at  Birmingham.' 
To  quote  his  own  modest  words,  in 
conclusion,  as  expressed  at  a  meeting  of 
engineers  in  Birmingham,  towards  the 
close  of  his  career :  1 1  may  say,  with- 
out being  egotistical,  that  I  have  mixed 
with  a  greater  variety  of  society  than 
perhaps  any  man  living.  I  have  dined 
in  mines  among  miners,  and  I  ha\e 
dined  with  kings  and  queens  and  with 
all  grades  of  the  nobility,  and  have 
seen  enough  to  inspire  me  with  the 
hope  that  my  exertions  have  not 
been  without  their  beneficial  results 
— that  my  labors  have  not  been  in 


vain. 


THE  central  figure  of  the  Kemble 
family  on  the  stage  is,  after  all, 
Mrs.  Siddons.  John  Philip  Kemble, 
indeed,  sustained  the  Shakespearean 
drama  with  a  power  and  propriety 
ranking  him  as  a  worthy  successor  to 
the  honors  of  the  great  Garrick ;  but 
he  left  behind  him  others  who  already, 
at  the  time  of  his  death,  shared  with 
him  the  admiration  of  the  public. 
With  all  his  admitted  weaknesses,  he 
was,  undoubtedly,  yet  an  actor  of  the 
heroic  pattern,  with  something  colossal 
in  his  reputation.  But  his  illustrious 
sister  was  all  this  and  more.  As  there 
was  no  one  on  the  British  stage  before 
her  with  whom  she  can  be  fully  com- 
pared ;  so  no  one  has  come  after  her  to 
divide  her  honors  with  posterity.  She 
stands  singly  and  alone  where  the  ge- 
nius of  Reynolds  placed  her,  a  grand 
impersonation  of  the  tragic  muse. 

In  the  biography  of  John  Kemble, 
we  have  traced  the  early  history  of  the 
family.  Sarah  Siddons,  the  eldest  child 
of  Roger  and  Sarah  Kemble,  was  born 
at  Brecon,  in  South  Wales,  July  5th, 
1755,  at  a  public-house  in  the  town 
which  long  bore  and  probably  still 
bears  the  sign,  "  The  Shoulder  of  Mut- 
ton." Her  father  was  at  the  time  the 

(446^ 


manager  of  an  itinerant  theatrical 
company,  and  had  taken  Brecon  in  the 
course  of  his  wanderings, — a  sensible 
person,  as  he  is  described,  pf  a  fine  ap- 
pearance, with  the  manners  of  a  gen- 
tleman, and  views  of  life  beyond  his 
humble  profession.  The  mother  was 
noted  for  her  beauty  and  a  certain  im- 
pressive stateliness.  "Her  voice,"  we 
are  told  by  the  poet  Campbell,  who 
saw  her  in  her  old  age,  "  had  much  of 
the  emphasis  of  her  daughter's;  and 
her  portrait,  which  long  graced  Mrs. 
Siddons's  drawing-room,  bore  an  intel- 
lectual expression  of  the  strongest 
power:  she  gave  you  the  idea  of  a 
Roman  matron."  These  traits  of  the 
parents,  inherited  by  the  children,  were 
the  germs  of  their  great  dramatic  ex- 
cellence. The  life  of  the  players  to 
which  they  were  introduced  in  their 
childhood  rapidly  developed  them.  It 
was  a  life,  of  course,  of  shifts  and  ex- 
pedients, that  of  these  strolling  play- 
ers :  none  better,  perhaps,  adapted  to 
develop  the  faculties  of  mind  and  body, 
and  bring  a  young  being  at  the  soon- 
est into  contact  with  the  joys  and  sor- 
rows, the  aspirations  and  the  littleness- 
es of  humanity.  Hogarth  has  given  us 
a  wonderful  picture  behind  the  scenes 


4AS 


SAEAH  SIDDONS. 


ed  as  a  common  soldier  and  was  quar- 
tered at  Wolverhampton,  where  his 
talents  and  attainments  were  discover- 
ed, and  where  he  made  the  acquaint- 
ance of  Roger  Kemble,  who  gave  him 
a  benefit  with  which  he  secured  his  dis- 
charge. He  then  set  up  for  a  teacher 
of  elocution,  and  Kemble  engaged  him 
as  a  tutor  for  his  daughter,  but  her 
mother,  thinking  him  too  much  of  a 
scapegrace  for  such  an  intimacy,  put 
an  end  to  the  arrangement.  Miss  Kem- 
ble was  much  courted  for  her  beauty, 
and  it  was  not  long  before  her  affec- 
tions were  engaged  by  Mr.  Siddons,  a 
versatile  actor  of  her  father's  com- 
pany, who  could  play  Hamlet  or  Har- 
lequin, as  it  might  be.  The  affair 
seemed  to  be  getting  along  pretty 
smoothly,  with  the  reluctant  permis- 
sion of  the  parents,  till  a  well-to-do 
squire  of  the  neighborhood  interposed 
as  a  lover,  enamored  by  the  fair  one's 
singing  an  opera  song,  "  Robin,  Sweet 
Robin."  This  created  new  expecta- 
tions in  the  family,  and  Siddons,  to 
precipitate  matters,  proposed  an  elope- 
ment, which  the  lady  declined.  He 
was  then  dismissed  from  the  company 
with  a  farewell  benefit,  of  which  he 
"took  an  unhandsome  advantage  by 
singing  at  the  close  of  the  entertain- 
ment, a  song  of  his  own  composition, 
addressed  to  the  good  people  of  Brecon, 
narrating  the  whole  course  of  his  love 
affair,  and  how  it  was  thwarted  by  the 
money  of  the  squire.  In  this  shabby 
performance,  Colin,  as  he  designated 
himself,  had  the  applause  of  a  crowded 
house,  but  when  he  left  the  stage,  he 
was  met  by  the  indignant  mother,  who 
soundly  boxed  his  ears  for  his  imper- 
tinence. The  lady  herself  must  have 


been  very  much  in  love  with  him,  or 
very  good-natured  to  forgive  this  ex- 
traordinary proceeding.  She  did  so. 
however,  and  it  was  agreed  between 
them  that  a  marriage  should  take  place 
when  her  parents  should  consent  to  it. 
In  the  meantime,  the  daughter  was  re- 
moved from  the  scene  by  an  engage- 
ment as  lady's  maid  to  Mrs.  Great- 
head,  at  Guy's  Cliff,  Warwickshire, 
This  introduced  her,  though  in  a  sub- 
ordinate capacity,  to  good  society,  while 
her  talents  were  appreciated  and  en- 
couraged by  the  admiration  she  re- 
ceived in  her  dramatic  readings.  Mr 
Siddons  visited  her  in  this  retirement ; 
he  was  at  length  accepted  by  the  pa- 
rents, and  in  November,  1773,  the 
lovers  were  married  at  Trinity  Church, 
Coventry.  Husband  and  wife  now  ap- 
peared together  on  the  stage  in  the  pro- 
vincial circuit.  Acting  one  night  at 
Cheltenham,  in  "Venice  Preserved," 
Mrs.  Siddons7  performance  of  Belvi- 
dera  was  witnessed  by  a  party  of  some 
distinction,  Lord  Bruce,  shortly  after 
Earl  of  Aylesbury,  and  his  accomplish- 
ed lady,  with  her  daughter  by  her  first 
husband,  the  honorable  Miss  Boyle,  a 
lady  of  great  beauty,  taste  and  sensi- 
bility, the  author  of  several  poems  ad 
mired  in  their  day.  The  young  act- 
ress, timid  and  sensitive,  fearino-  the 

7  '  O 

indifference  or  contempt  of  her  fashion- 
able audience,  and  interpreting  some 
noises  in  the  theatre  as  signs  of  dis- 
pleasure, was  quite  dispirited  after  thn 
play,  and  was,  of  course,  proportion- 
ably  delighted  on  the  morrow,  upon 
learning  that  she  had  made  the  most 
favorable  impression.  Miss  Boyle  call- 
ed upon  her,  assured  her  of  her  powers, 
gave  her  confidence,  assisted  her  in  the 


SAEAH  SIDDONS. 


449 


preparation  of  her  wardrobe  for  the 
stao^e,  and  became  her  friend  for  life. 

o    •* 

To  the  fair  youthful  actress,  conscious 
yet  distrustful  of  her  powers,  craving 
sympathy,  the  advent  of  this  kindred 
titled  beauty  must  have  appeared  as 
that  of  a  very  angel  of  light.  The 
Aylesbury  family  communicated  their 
impressions  of  the  new  charming  per- 
sonage they  had  discovered  in  the  pro- 
vinces to  Garrick,  who  was  then  en- 
tering upon  his  closing  season,  and  he 
sent  down  one  of  the  most  eminent 
members  of  his  company,  King,  the 
original  "  Lord  Ogleby,"  to  witness  her 
performance.  He  saw  her  at  Chelten- 
ham, in  the  "  Fair  Penitent,"  admired, 
and  reported  accordingly.  The  result 
was  an  invitation  to  Drury  Lane,  with 
a  salary  of  five  pounds  a  week.  Her  ap- 
pearance in  the  green-room,  among  the 
privileged  actresses  of  the  theatre, 
would  afford  a  fine  subject  for  a  pain- 
ter in  depicting  the  wayward  and  im- 
perious beauties,  the  Yates,  Abington 
and  Younge,  the  bustling  Garrick  lav- 
ishing his  attentions  in  their  presence 
upon  the  new  expectancy  of  the  stage. 
Though  but  recently  recovered  from 
the  illness  attending  the  birth  of  her 
second  child,  her  beauty  was  remark- 
able enough  to  induce  the  manager  to 
assign  her  the  distinguished  character 
of  the  goddess  Venus  in  a  revival  of 
his  celebrated  Shakespeare  "  Jubilee  " 
procession,  in  which  the  entire  strength 
of  the  company  was  called  out.  This 
appears  to  have  excited  the  jealousy 
of  the  other  ladies,  who  crowded  before 
her  to  obscure  her  glory  in  the  last 
scene,  which  Garrick,  with  his  quick, 
brilliant  eyes  perceived,  and  restored 
her  to  the  full  blaze  of  popular  admira- 
57 


tion.  Had  not  the  manager  interposed, 
wrote  Mrs.  Siddons,  subsequently,  of 
this  event,  and  "brought  us  forward 
with  him  with  his  own  hands,  my  little 
Cupid  and  myself,  whose  appointed  sit- 
uations were  in  the  very  front  of  the 
stage,  might  have  as  well  been  in  the 
island  of  Paphos  at  that  moment."  The 
Cupid,  by  the  way,  turned  out  to  be  no 
less  a  person  in  after  life  than  the  fa- 
mous actor,  dramatist  and  song  writer, 
Thomas  Dibdin.  He  remembered  how 
on  this  interesting  occasion  Venus 
brought  the  requisite  smile  to  his 
countenance  by  the  pleasant  inquiry 
what  sugar-plums  he  liked  best,  prom- 
ising a  good  supply  after  the  scenes, 
and  how  she  kept  her  word. 

Mrs.  Siddons  first  dramatic  perform- 
ance at  Drury  Lane  was  on  the  29th 
of  December,  1775,  in  the  character  of 
Portia,  in  the  "Merchant  of  Venice," 
King  acting  Shylock.  She  was  an- 
nounced on  the  bills  simply  as  "a 
young  lady,  being  her  first  appear- 
ance." The  reports  of  the  performance 
in  the  papers  of  the  day  vary  as  to  its 
merit ;  but  there  is  a  general  impres- 
sion conveyed  of  a  certain  degree  of 
failure,  arising  from  timidity  and  nerv- 
ousness. Expectation  in  fact  had  been 
highly  raised,  comparisons  provoked, 
and  there  was  much  disappointment. 
The  friendly  interpretation,  however, 
of  Parson  Bate,  an  anomalous  clerical 
dramatist  of  the  day  who  hung  about 
the  theatre,  opened  a  prospect  of  future 
eminence.  Noticing  her  fine  figure, 
expressive  features,  graceful  and  easy 
action,  her  "  whole  deportment  that  of 
a  gentlewoman,"  he  detected  in  her  a 
faculty  of  "  enforcing  the  beauties  of 
her  author  by  an  emphatic  though  easy 


450 


SAKAH  SIDDONS. 


art,  almost  peculiar  to  herself."  Her 
acting  upon  the  whole  seems  to  have 
lacked  force;  though  there  was  no 
great  opportunity  for  her  in  Portia. 
A  second  character,  Epiccene,  in  Col- 
man's  adaptation  of  Ben  Jonson's  "  Si- 
lent Woman,"  was  hardly  more  to  her 
advantage;  nor  could  she  gain  much 
reputation  from  Julia,  in  Parson  Bate's 
comic  opera,  "  The  Blackamoor  Wash- 
ed White ; "  or  the  subordinate  parts 
in  which  she  was  cast  in  Mrs.  Cowley's 
"  Runaway,"  and  a  farce  by  Vaughan, 
a  man  about  town  who  figures  as 
Dapper  in  "  The  Rosciad,"  and  is  said 
to  have  suggested  the  portrait  of 
Bangle  in  "  The  Critic."  It  was  some- 
thing more  to  the  purpose  that  she 
was  cast  as  Mrs.  Strictland  in  "The 
Suspicious  Husband,"  when  Garrick 
played  Ranger,  and  that  he  chose  her 
for  Lady  Anne  when  he  revived  the 
performance  of  "  Richard  III.,"  after  an 
interval  of  several  years.  On  this  lat- 
ter occasion  she  was  somewhat  discon- 
certed by  the  energy  of  Garrick.  He 
had  given  her  a  particular  direction 
when  addressing  him  on  the  stage  to 
turn  her  back  to  the  audience,  that  his 
countenance  might  be  in  full  view  of 
the  house.  Upon  her  neglecting  this, 
Garrick  cast  upon  her  a  withering  look 
of  rebuke  which  she  never  forgot  or 
forgave.  The  season  shortly  after 
closed,  and  during  the  recess,  Garrick 
having  now  retired  from  the  stage,  she 
was  informed  that  the  new  managers 
had  no  occasion  for  her  services.  Thus 
closed  her  first  London  engagement. 
It  was  a  grievous  disappointment,  but 
probably  a  real  advantage  to  her  act- 
ing. She  was  yet  quite  young,  at  the 
age  of  twenty,  and  needed  further  con- 


fidence and  strengthening  of  her  pow 
ers.  Judging  by  the  admiration  she 
immediately  after  excited  in  the  pro- 
vinces, it  would  seem  she  either  had 
not  a  proper  opportunity  to  exhibit 
her  talents  in  London,  or  had  not  been 
adequately  appreciated.  It  is  to  the 
credit  of  Mrs.  Abington  that  she  re- 
cognized her  merits  and  warned  the 
managers  of  their  mistake  in  parting 
with  her.  The  impression,  however, 
which  she  had  made  in  London 
was  not  a  commanding  one,  and 
had  she  remained,  she  would,  under 
many  disadvantages  have  found  the 
progress  upward  slow  and  difficult. 
When  she  re-appeared,  after  a  brief 
interval,  it  was  to  strike  with  a 
fresh  impulse  and  triumph  once  and 
forever. 

In  the  meantime,  she  was  gaining 
new  laurels  in  the  provinces  in  gen- 
teel comedy,  and  in  such  passionate 
performances  as  Euphrasia  in  the 
"  Grecian  Daughter,"  and  Alicia  in 
"Jane  Shore,"  parts  which  offered 
good  situations,  but,  compared  with 
the  teeming  language  of  Shakespeare, 
were  skeleton  words  to  be  supplement- 
ed and  embodied  in  the  emotions  of 
her  own  generous  nature.  Shakespeare 
sustains  himself  on  the  stage ;  the  poor- 
est acting  cannot  altogether  drag  him 
down;  but  Rowe  and  Southerne  re- 
quire "the  foreign  aid  of  ornament." 
The  secret  of  Mrs.  Siddons'  great  suc- 
cess in  parts  now  thrown  aside  as  ut- 
terly barren,  is  to  be  attributed  nut  so 
much  to  the  different  literary  tastes  of 
her  day,  but  simply  to  her  own  power- 
ful sympathies  and  energies.  When 
we  have  another  Mrs.  Siddons,  the  Ca- 
list  as,  Euphrasias  and  Alicias  may 


SAEAH  SIDDONS. 


451 


again  be  the  wonder  and  delight  of  the 
stage. 

After  leaving  London  in  the  sum- 
mer of  1776,  Mrs.  Siddons  appeared  at 
Birmingham,  acting  with  Henderson, 
the  successor  to  Garrick,  till  he  was 
succeeded  by  John  Philip  Kemble. 
Henderson  saw  and  felt  her  powers, 
declaring  "  she  never  had  an  equal  and 
never  would  have  a  superior,"  a  pro- 
phecy often  recalled  at  the  height  of 
her  fame  and  still  warranted  in  the  ex- 
perience of  posterity.  Early  in  the  fol- 
lowing year  she  played  at  Manchester, 
and  among  other  characters  was  much 
admired  in  "  Hamlet."  Nor  are  we  to 
suppose  that  this  was  a  mere  eccen- 
tricity, the  freak  of  a  handsome  woman 
in  male  attire  seeking  a  momentary  ap- 
plause. Boaden,  who  did  not  witness 
the  performance,  fancies  its  effect  in 
comparing  it  with  that  of  her  brother, 
John  Kemble.  "  The  conception  would 
be  generally  bolder  and  warmer,  not 
so  elaborate  in  speech,  nor  so  syste- 
matically  graceful  in  action." 

From  Manchester,  Mrs.  Siddons  pass- 
ed the  same  season  to  York,  where  Tate 
Wilkinson,  the  celebrated  manager, 
now  held  sway.  He  played  with  her  in 
the  Grecian  Daughter,  and  has  record- 
ed in  his  "  Memoirs,"  his  recollections 
of  her  appearance  and  acting  at  this 
time.  Though  suffering  from  ill-health, 
she  created  the  most  powerful  impres- 
sion : — "  All  lifted  up  their  eyes  with 
astonishment  that  such  a  voice,  such  a 
judgment  and  such  acting,  should  have 
been  neglected  by  a  London  audience, 
and  by  the  first  actor  in  the  world." 
John  Palmer  was  then  the  manager  at 
Bath,  the  most  important  of  the  pro-* 
rincial  theatres,  and  by  the  advice  of 


Henderson  engaged  Mrs.  Siddons  in 
his  company.  Here,  supported  by  the 
cultivated  society  of  the  place,  at  that 
period  the  centre  of  witty  and  fashion, 
able  life  out  of  London,  she  soon  found 
congenial  support.  Her  affections  were 
enlisted  by  warm-hearted  friends,  and 
her  efforts  on  the  stage  encouraged  by 
the  learned  and  refined.  In  this  society 
there  was  an  accomplished  clergyman, 
Dr.  Thomas  Sedgewick  Whalley,  a  gen- 
tleman of  taste  and  fortune,  and  of 
some  literary  celebrity  as  the  author 
of  a  long  narrative  poem,  "  Edwy  and 
Edilda."  He  occupied  one  of  the  finest 
houses  on  the  Crescent,  was  intimate 
with  Madame  Piozzi,  corresponded 
with  that  voluminous  letter- writer, 
Miss  Seward,  and  was  in  fact  a  fine 
specimen  of  a  dilettante  gentleman  of 
the  old  school,  with  something  femi- 
nine in  his  disposition,  generous  even 
to  prodigality,  tempering  a  love  of  the 
world  in  its  gentler  enjoyments  with 
the  respectability  of  his  profession. 
Mrs.  Siddons  found  in  him  and  the 
ladies  of  his  family  warm  friends;  she 
corresponded  with  them,  when  they 
were  separated,  without  reserve,  and 
some  of  the  most  delightful  revelations 
of  her  character  are  to  be  found  in  her 
letters  preserved  in  the  Whalley  cor- 
respondence. In  one  of  the  earliest  of 
these,  addressed  to  Dr.  Whalley  from 
Bristol,  where  Mrs.  Siddons  frequently 
acted  in  connection  with  her  engage- 
ment at  Bath,  travelling  rapidly  from 
one  place  to  the  other,  we  have  a  reve. 
lation  of  her  consciousness  of  those 
natural  powers  and  impulses  which 
gave  its  peculiar  effect  to  her  acting, 
and  distinguished  it  from  that  of  most 
other  tragic  heroines.  Mrs.  Siddon? 


452 


SAEAH  SIDDONS. 


was  always  a  severe  student ;  it  was 
impossible  for  her  to  take  things  easily ; 
and  never  was  she  harder  at  work,  per- 
fecting herself  in  her  art,  than  during 
the  two  or  three  years  in  which  she 
was  acting  at  Bath.  Her  salary  was 
three  pounds  a  week,  and  for  this  she 
had  to  practice  a  ready  obedience  to 
the  necessity  or  caprice  of  the  stage, 
acting  subordinate  parts  in  comedy  till 
she  had  by  patient  occasional  efforts 
created  a  demand  for  her  better  tragic 
performances.  "  My  industry  and  per- 
severance," she  long  afterwards  wrote 
of  this  period,  "were  indefatigable. 
When  I  recollect  all  this  labor  of  mind 
and  body,  I  wonder  that  I  had  strength 
and  courage  to  support  it,  interrupted 
as  I  was  by  the  cares  of  a  mother,  and 
by  the  childish  sports  of  my  little  ones, 
who  were  often  most  unwillingly  hush- 
ed to  silence  for  interrupting  their  mo- 
ther's studies."  At  length,  when  the 
inevitable  time  came  when  she  was  to 
be  called  again  to  London,  it  was  with 
this  plea  of  maternity  that  she  recon- 
ciled herself  and  her  friends  to  her  de- 
parture from  the  friendly  circle  at  Bath. 
On  her  farewell  performance  she  deliv- 
ered a  poetical  address  of  her  own  com- 
position, in  which,  among  other  things, 
she  disclosed  the  three  reasons  which 
she  had  mysteriously  declared  as  gov- 
erning her  separation  from  her  friends. 
After  enumerating  the  favors  she  had 
received  at  Bath,  her  three  children, 
Henry,  Sarah  and  Maria  were  brought 
upon  the  stage : 

These  are  the  moles  that  bear  me  from  your 

side, 

Where  I  was  rooted — where  I  could  have  died. 
Stand  forth,  ye  elves,  and  plead  your  mother's 

cause  : 
Ye  little  magnets,  whose  soft  influence  draws 


Me  from  a  point  where  every  gimtle  breeze 
Wafted  my  bark  to  happiness  and  ease — 
Sends  me  adventurous  on  a  larger  main, 
In  hopes  that  you  may  profit  by  my  gam. 

London  was  now  before  her  with 
fears  and  anticipations  heightened  to 
the  extreme  of  sensibility  by  her  pre- 
vious disappointment  in  the  metropo- 
lis. She  approached  the  new  trial  of 
her  powers  which  was  to  decide  her 
fate  as  an  actress  with  much  anxiety. 
The  time  appointed  for  her  re-appear- 
ance at  Drury  Lane  was  the  10th  of 
October,  1782,  and  the  play  chosen  for 
her  performance,  by  the  advice  of  the 
elder  Sheridan,  was  Southern's  tragedy 
of  "Isabella,  or  the  Fatal  Marriage."  For 
a  whole  fortnight  before  the  day,  she 
suffered,  as  she  herself  tells  us,  "  from 
nervous  agitation  more  than  can  be 
imagined."  The  fate  of  her  family  and 
of  herself,  she  felt  hung  upon  the  issue, 
and  what  if  she  should  be  compelled 
to  return  to  the  provinces  disgraced 
after  a  second  failure  in  the  metropo- 
lis ?  At  the  first  rehearsal  she  feared 
to  throw  out  her  voice  till  she  uncon- 
sciously gained  force  and  was  applaud 
ed  by  King,  the  manager.  Before  the 
time  came  she  was  dismayed  by  a  nerv- 
ous hoarseness  "  which  made  her  per- 
fectly wretched.  Happily,  this  cleared 
away  with  days  of  fine  sunshine,  and 
at  last  her  father  came  to  re-assure  her 
and  accompany  her  to  the  theatre.  Her 
husband  was  too  agitated  to  be  pres- 
ent. The  part  of  Isabella  was  well 
adapted  to  display  her  peculiar  pow- 
ers. It  is  in  reality  the  whole  of  the 
piece :  the  heroine  is  in  the  eye  of  the 
audience  from  the  first  moment  to  the 
last ;  the  remaining  actors  simply  con- 
tribute  the  situations.  The  story  i« 


SABAH  SIDDONS. 


453 


very  simple.  Biron,  contrary  to  the 
wishes  of  his  father,  a  haughty,  world- 
ly-minded nobleman,  marries  Isabella, 
and  after  the  birth  of  a  son  engages  in 
foreign  wars  and  is  reported  to  be 
slain  in  battle.  The  wife  makes  her 
appearance  with  her  child  in  the  open- 
ing scene  in  great  distress,  appealing 
in  vain  for  pity  to  her  father-in-law, 
and  is  about  to  be  arrested  for  debt 
when  her  suitor  Villeroy,  whose  at- 
tentions, immersed  as  she  was  in  grief 
for  the  loss  of  her  husband,  she  had 
resolutely  thrust  aside,  pays  her  obli- 
gations, and  with  the  motive  for  pro- 
tection to  her  child  urged  upon  her, 
she  reluctantly  consents  to  the  mar- 
riage. This  is  hardly  concluded  before 
Biron  returns,  is  recognized  by  her 
with  old  affection  and  there  is  nothing 
left  to  her  distracted  life  but  death. 
This  is  the  outline  which  Mrs.  Siddons 
had  to  fill  up  with  passion  and  emo- 
tion. Compared  with  the  fulness  of 
the  Shakespearean  drama,  it  is  but  a 
mere  sketch;  but  it  is  a  sketch  skil- 
fully drawn  by  an  able  author,  with  a 
tinge  of  the  Greek  melancholy,  which 
is  the  noblest  melancholy  on  the  stage, 
and  in  one  of  its  most  important  scenes, 
that  following  the  recognition,  it  has 
something  of  the  Greek  manner  of  exe- 
cution. From  the  beginning,  the  au- 
dience was  captivated  by  the  perform- 
ance, from  the  first  touches  of  maternal 
tenderness  —  it  was  her  own  child 
Henry  who  was  with  her  on  the  stage 
— the  dignity  of  a  noble  sorrow,  the 
energy  of  a  lofty  nature  called  forth 
by  persecution  and  distress,  through 
scenes  of  perplexity  and  dismay,  to 
the  final  terrors  of  insanity  and  death, 
slosing  with  that  hysterical  laugh  of 


despair  at  the  moment  in  which  she 
stabs  herself,  celebrated  by  Madame 
De  Stael  in  one  of  the  chapters  of 
Corinne,  and  never  to  be  forgotten  by 
those  who  heard  it.  It  was  a  great 
triumph;  such  mingled  grace  and 
power;  so  natural  an  expression  of 
emotion,  touching  the  soul  to  the  quick, 
were  new  to  the  stage,  and  the  spon- 
taneous surrender  of  the  audience  in 
tears  and  ecstacy,  was  followed  on  the 
morrow  by  the  cooler  admiration  of 
the  critics.  The  performance  of  that 
night  marks  an  era  in  the  history  of 
the  British  stage.  The  established 
fame  of  the  Kembles  dates  from  it. 
A  woman  accomplished  the  work.  It 
prepared  the  way  for  John  Philip 
Kemble  and  the  revival  of  the  drama 
in  its  noblest  forms. 

So  great  was  the  appreciation  of  Mrs. 
Siddons  in  Isabella,  that  it  was  repeat- 
ed in  the  course  of  the  month  eight 
times.  It  was  then  succeeded  by  Eu- 
phrasia  in  Arthur  Murphy's  "  Grecian 
Daughter,"  which  gave  her  an  ample 
opportunity  for  heroic  action  in  vari- 
ous effective  stage  points.  This  was 
followed  by  Jane  Shore  in  Howe's  tra- 
gedy, Calista  in  the  "Fair  Penitent," 
Belvidera  in  Otway's  "  Venice  Pre- 
served, "  and  Zara  in  Congreve's 
"  Mourning  Bride ; "  characters  in 
which  she  traversed  the  whole  round 
of  the  passions,  of  pitiful  suffering, 
anguish  in  distress,  love,  remorse  in  in- 
famy, pride  and  indignation,  and  mad- 
ness. In  all  these  plays,  with  their 
various  merits,  she  had  to  sustain  the 
character  by  her  own  transcendent  ex- 
ertions. Her  acting  was  not  so  much 
what  she  found  in  these  several  parts, 
as  what  she  brought  to  them  in  her 


454 


SAEAH  SIDDOffS. 


generously  gifted  nature,  her  grandeur 
of  niien,  her  soul-subduing  pathos,  the 
strength,  freedom  and  spontaneity  of 
her  emotions. 

In  private  life,  if  we  may  call  that 
private  life  which  embraced  the  vast 
circle  of  London  literary,  political, 
artistical  and  fashionable  society,  Mrs. 
Siddons  received  the  most  flattering 
and  at  times  annoying  attentions. 
A  scene  of  this  kind  is  famous  in  the 
social  annals  of  the  metropolis.  Miss 
Monckton,  daughter  of  Viscount  Gal- 
way,  married  a  few  years  after  to  the 
Earl  of  Cork,  was  then  in  the  prime 
of  her  maiden  vigor,  the  princess  of 
lion  hunters  in  the  metropolis,  a  char- 
acter in  which  she  long  maintained  her 
reputation,  surviving  till  1840,  and  at- 
taining the  advanced  age  of  ninety- 
four.  Her  soirees  had  been  honored 
by  the  company  of  Dr.  Johnson ;  Mrs. 
Thrale  was  among  her  visitors ;  Lord 
Erskine,  Monk  Lewis,  and  a  host  of 
others;  in  fact,  pretty  much  all  the 
celebrities  of  her  long  reign  to  the 
days  of  the  Key.  Sydney  Smith.  So 
distinguished  a  person,  as  Mrs.  Siddons 
suddenly  became,  was  not  likely  long 
to  escape  her  attentions.  She  secured 
her  for  what  the  actress  thought  a 
quiet  visit  on  a  Sunday  evening,  for 
she  avoided  large  parties,  and  the  host- 
ess had  solemnly  promised  her  there 
should  be  no  crowd,  only  half  a  dozen 
friends.  Mrs.  Siddons  went  early, 
dressed  plainly,  taking  her  young  son 
with  her,  and  was  enjoying  the  society 
of  a  few  lady  acquaintances,  when,  as 
she  w  as  about  taking  leave,  there  was 
a  sudden  irruption  of  blue  stockings 
and  notabilities,  who  came  thronging 
in  and  fell  upon  her  with  the  most  ex- 


traordinary avidity.  "  I  was  therefore 
obliged,"  she  writes  in  her  memoranda, 
"  in  a  state  of  indescribable  mortifica- 
tion, to  sit  quietly  down  till  I  know 
not  what  hour  in  the  morning ;  but  for 
hours  before  my  departure,  the  room 
I  sat  in  was  so  painfully  crowded,  that 
the  people  absolutely  stood  on  the 
chairs,  round  the  walls,  that  they 
might  look  over  their  neighbor's  heads 
to  stare  at  me ;  and  if  it  had  not  been 
for  the  benevolent  politeness  of  Mr. 
Erskine,  who  had  been  acquainted 
with  my  arrangement,  I  know  not 
what  weakness  I  might  have  been  sur- 
prised into,  especially  being  torment- 
ed, as  I  was,  by  the  ridiculous  inter- 
rogations of  some  learned  ladies,  who 
were  called  blues,  the  meaning  of 
which  title  I  did  not  at  that  time  ap- 
preciate, much  less  did  I  comprehend 
the  meaning  of  the  greater  part  of  their 
learned  talk.  These  profound  ladies, 
however,  furnished  much  amusement 
to  the  town  for  many  weeks  after,  nay 
I  believe  I  might  say,  for  the  whole 
winter."  This  reception  was  afterwards 
served  up  in  a  highly  humorous  paper 
by  Cumberland,  in  his  "  Observer,"  in 
which  the  hostess  figures  as  Vanessa, 
and  reviews  her  motley  assembly  with 
great  spirit.  "  You  was  adorable  last 
night  in  Belvidera,"  says  a  pert  young 
person  with  a  high  toupee  to  the  act- 
ress ;  "  I  sat  in  Lady  Blubber's  box,  and 
I  can  assure  you  she,  and  her  daughters 
too,  wept  most  bitterly — but  then  that 
charming  mad  scene,  by  my  soul  it  was 
a  chef  cPwuvre  /  pray,  madam,  give  me 
leave  to  ask  you,  was  you  really  in 
your  senses  ? "  Miss  Fanny  Burney, 
whose  "  Evelina "  had  brought  her 
plenty  of  this  sort  of  admiration,  was 


SARAH  SIDDONS. 


455 


one  of  the  company  on  this  memorable 
occasion  at  Miss  Monckton's,  and  re- 
cords the  event  in  her  diary,  and  how 
her  father  and  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds  ac- 
companied her.  "  We  found  Mrs.  Sid- 
dons  the  actress  there.  She  is  a  wo- 
man of  excellent  character,  and  there- 
fore I  am  very  glad  she  is  thus  patron- 
ized, since  Mrs.  Abington,  and  so  many 
frail  fair  ones,  have  been  thus  noticed 
by  the  great.  She  behaved  with  great 
propriety,  very  calm,  modest,  quiet  and 
unaffected.  She  has  a  very  fine  coun- 
tenance, and  her  eyes  look  both  intel- 
ligent and  soft.  She  has,  however,  a 
steadiness  in  her  manner  and  deport- 
ment by  no  means  engaging.  Mrs. 
Thrale,  who  was  there  said,  'Why, 
this  is  a  leaden  goddess  we  are  all 
worshiping !  however,  we  shall  soon 
gild  it.' r  The  gilding  came  in  a  very 
substantial  improvement  upon  the  pit- 
tance she  had  received  in  the  hard 
service  of  the  provincial  theatres.  For, 
her  eighty  nights'  performances,  an  ex- 
traordinary number,  during  the  season, 
brought  her  about  fifteen  hundred 
pounds.  One  of  her  benefits,  increased 
by  presents,  as  was  the  custom  of  the 
time,  produced  nearly  half  this  sum. 
The  lawyers  were  so  pleased  with  her 
that  they  sent  her  a  purse  of  a  hundred 
guineas,  from  so  many  subscribers 
among  them.  These  personal  atten- 
tions were  crowned  by  the  compli- 
ments Mrs.  Siddons  received  at  the 
hands  of  the  royal  family.  George  III. 
in  his  better  days  had  a  happy  dispo- 
sition to  be  easily  amused,  and  was 
fond  of  theatrical  entertainments.  On 
several  occasions  he  distinguished  the 
Kembles  by  calling  for  special  per- 
formances at  the  theatre,  and  there 


were  frequent  "  readings  "  by  Mrs.  Sid- 
dons  at  Buckingham  House  and  Wind- 
sor Castle.  Like  most  honors  in  the 
world,  they  were  at  some  inconveni 
ence  to  the  recipient.  In  her  attire  on 
the  stage,  as  we  have  seen,  she  culti 
-vated  simplicity;  the  passions  speak- 
ing for  her  in  such  parts  as  Jane  Sho^e, 
and  not  the  dress.  When  she  came  to 
appear  before  the  queen  in  these  private 
receptions,  she  found  that  it  was  indis- 
pensable etiquette  to  wear  an  anoma- 
lous sacque  with  a  hoop,  treble  ruffles 
and  lappets,  a  costume  in  which  she 
says,  "  I  felt  not  at  all  at  my  ease."  As 
the  reading  went  on,  she  was  several 
times  urged  to  take  some  refreshment  in 
the  next  room,  which,  though  ready  to 
drop  with  the  exertion,  and  the  fatigue 
of  standing,  she  was  unwilling  to  ac- 
cept ;  fearing  to  "  run  the  risk  of  fall- 
ing down  by  walking  backwards  out 
of  the  room,  a  ceremony  not  to  be  dis- 
pensed with,  the  flooring,  too,  being 
rubbed  bright.  I  afterwards  learnt," 
she  adds,  "  from  one  of  the  ladies  who 
was  present  at  the  time,  that  her  majesty 
had  expressed  herself  surprised  to  find 
me  so  collected  in  so  new  a  position,  and 
that  I  had  conducted  myself  as  if  1 
had  been  used  to  a  court.  At  any  rate, 
I  had  frequently  personated  queens." 

The  acquaintance  of  Mrs.  Siddons 
with  Dr.  Johnson,  which  afforded  her 
in  after  life  one  of  the  most,  pleasing 
reminiscences  of  her  career,  was  formed 
in  the  autumn  of  1783.  It  was  about 
a  year  before  his  decease,  when,  op- 
pressed with  the  infirmities  of  failing 
health,  he  was  confined  to  his  lodgings 
in  Bolt  Court.  At  his  particular  re- 
quest, conveyed  by  her  friend,  Mr. 
Windham,  she  visited  him  there  and 


456 


SAEAH  SIDDONS. 


took  tea  with  him.  On  her  entering, 
he  made  her  a  very  handsome  compli- 
ment. There  was  some  delay  in  his 
servant  Frank  providing  her  with  a 
chair.  "  Madam,"  said  he,  "  you,  who 
so  often  occasion  a  want  of  seats  to 
other  people,  will  the  more  easily  ex- 
cuse the  want  of  one  yourself."*  The 
doctor  then  entertained  her  with  his 
reminiscences  of  the  old  British  stage, 
of  Mrs.  Porter,  Mrs.  Clive  and  Mrs. 
Pritchard,  with  a  fine  eulogium  upon 
his  friend  Garrick,  whom  he  said  he 
admired  more  in  comedy  than  tragedy, 
and  whose  social  talents  at  the  head  of 
a  table  were  more  to  be  envied  than 
even  his  performances  on  the  stage. 
He  talked  of  his  favorite  female  char- 
acter in  Shakespeare,  Queen  Katharine, 
which  Mrs.  Siddons  promised  to  act  for 
him,  offering  him  an  easy  chair  at  the 
stage  door,  where  he  might  hear  and 
see  to  advantage,  for,  as  he  said,  he  was 
too  deaf  and  too  blind  to  sit  at  a  dis- 
tance, and  he  had  little  inclination  to 
expose  himself  to  the  public  gaze  in  a 
stage-box.  The  good  doctor,  however, 
never  witnessed  the  performance.  He 
died  before  Mrs.  Siddons  was  brought 
forward  in  the  play  and  it  became  one 
of  her  enduring  triumphs.  Johnson 
was  greatly  charmed  with  her  "  mo- 
desty and  propriety  "  in  this  interview, 
of  which  he  wrote  to  Mrs.  Thrale, 
"Neither  praise  nor  money,  the  two 
powerful  corrupters  of  mankind,  seem 
to  have  depraved  her.  I  shall  be  glad 
to  see  her  again."  She  paid  him  a  few 
morning  visits  afterwards,  when  she 
was  received  with  studied  attention 
and  politeness. 


*  John  Philip  Kemble's  Memoranda  in  Bos- 
veil's  Life  of  Johnson.     Ed.  1835,  viii.  237. 


Not  inferior  to  this  affection  of  John- 
son, was  the  regard  entertained  for  her 
by  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds.      We  have 
met  him  in  that  dilettante  crowd  at 
Miss  Monckton's,  among  her  trouble- 
some worshipers.     He  became  a  fre- 
quent  attendant   upon   her    perform- 
ances in  those  days  which  she  loved 
to  recall  when  she  was  surrounded  by 
the  intellectual  nobility  of  England. 
"He    approved,"    she    writes,   "very 
much  of  my  costumes,  and  of  my  hair 
without  powder,  which  at  that  time 
was  used  in  great  profusion,  with  a 
reddish-brown  tint,  and  a  great  quan- 
tity of  pomatum,  which,  well  kneaded 
together,  modelled  the  fair  ladies'  tres- 
ses into  large  curls  like  demi-cannon. 
My  locks  were  generally  braided  into 
a  small  compass,  so  as  to  ascertain  the 
size  and  shape  of  my  head,  which,  to 
a  painter's  eye,  was  of  course  an  agree- 
able departure  from  the  mode.     My 
short  waist,  too,  was  to  him  a  pleasing 
contrast  to  the  long   stiff   stays  and 
hoop  petticoats,  which  were  then  the 
fashion,  even  on  the  stage,  and  it  ob- 
tained   his    unqualified    approbation, 
He  always  sat  in  the  orchestra;  and 
in  that  place  were  to  be  seen,  O  glori- 
ous constellation !  Burke,  Gibbon,  She- 
ridan, Windham  ;  and,  though  last,  not 
least,  the  illustrious  Fox,  of  whom  it  was 
frequently  said,  that  iron  tears  were 
drawn  down   Pluto's  gloomy  cheeks. 
And  these  great  men  would  often  visit 
my  dressing-room,  after  the  play,  to 
make  their  bows,  and  honor  me  with 
their  applauses.     I  must  repeat,  O  glo- 
rious  days !      Neither   did   his   royal 
highness  the  Prince  of  Wales  withhold 
this  testimony  of  his  approbation." 
This  was  much,  but  happily  the  ge 


SAKAH  SIDDOrT 


457 


nius  of  Reynolds  transferred  the  glow- 
ing impression  of  the  moment  in  its 
most  exalted  form  to  his  canvas,  and 
has  left  us  in  his  great  painting  of  Mrs. 
Siddons  as  the  Tragic  Muse,  an  imper- 
ishable record  of  her  triumphs.  Bor- 
rowing a  conception  of  his  favorite 
Michael  Angelo  from  the  attendants 
upon  one  of  his  prophets  in  the  Vati- 
can, he  painted  the  actress  sitting  in  a 
chair  of  state  supported  by  two  figures 
of  human  fate,  of  pity  and  terror,  hold- 
ing the  dagger  and  the  bowl.  Her 
figure  in  an  attitude  of  elevated  atten- 
tion, of  dramatic  inspiration,  is  sug- 
gestive at  once  of  repose  and  action, 
the  right  hand  reclining,  the  left  with 
the  pointing  fore-finger  raised,  suggest- 
ive of  the  emotion  passing  within,  while 
a  tiara  and  necklace  and  gorgeous  folds 
of  drapery  enhance  the  grandeur  of 
the  position.  The  attitude  was  as- 
sumed by  Mrs.  Siddons  in  the  studio 
at  the  first  sitting,  and  it  appeared  to 
the  painter  so  happy  an  inspiration 
that  he  adopted  it  on  the  instant.  The 
picture  has  been  generally  held  as  one 
of  the  noblest  of  the  painter's  works, 
in  the  language  of  Mr.  Tom  Taylor, 
the  latest  of  his  biographers,  "the 
finest  example  of  truly  idealized  por- 
traiture, in  which  we  have  at  once  an 
epitome  of  the  sitter's  distinction,  call- 
ing or  achievement,  and  the  loftiest 
expression  of  which  the  real  form  and 
features  are  capable."  Burke  followed 
its  progress  in  the  artist's  studio  with 
the  greatest  interest,  and  Barry  pro- 
nounced it  "  both  for  the  ideal  and  the 
execution  the  finest  picture  of  the  kind 
perhaps  in  the  world,  something,  indeed, 
more  than  a  portrait,  serving  to  give 
an  excellent  idea  of  what  an  enthusi- 
58 


astic  mind  is  apt  to  conceive  of  those 
pictures  of  confined  history,  for  which 
Apelles  was  so  celebrated  by  the  an- 
cient writers."  The  artist  himself  was 
so  pleased  with  it  that,  contrary  to  his 
usual  custom,  he  placed  his  own  name 
upon  it,  written  on  the  skirt  of  the  arc 
pie  drapery,  gallantly  remarking  to  the 
lady,  "  I  could  not  lose  the  honor  this 
opportunity  offered  to  me  for  my  name 
going  down  to  posterity  on  the  hem 
of  your  garment.*  There  was  one 
friendly  admirer  of  Mrs.  Siddons,  how- 
ever, who  did  not  appreciate  Sir  Josh- 
ua's management  of  this  apotheosis  of 
her  genius.  Miss  Seward,  writing  to 
the  poet  Hayley,  remarks,  "  The  defects 
and  incongruities  of  the  situation  and 
drapery  amaze  me — a  heavy  theatrical 
chair  of  state  on  the  clouds,  gold-lace 
and  pearls,  plaited  hair,  and  the  im- 
perial tiara  upon  an  allegorical  figure, 
which  sorrow  and  high-souled  resolve 
must  be  supposed  to  have  incapaci- 
tated for  the  studied  labors  of  the  toi- 
lette." But  what  woman,  however 
well  disposed,  was  ever  satisfied  with 
the  dress  of  another?  The  subject, 
too,  demanded  the  pomp  and  luxury 
of  art  for  its  aggrandizement. 

In  the  same  year,  1784,  in  which 
this  picture  was  exhibited,  Gainsbo- 
rough painted  a  portrait  of  Mrs.  Sid- 
dons at  the  height  of  her  youthful 
beauty,  also  a  chef-d'oeuvre  of  art. 
In  this,  too,  Mrs.  Siddons  is  seated, 
wearing  a  black  hat  and  feathers,  and 
a  blue  and  buff  striped  silk  dress.  "  A 
more  exquisitely  graceful,  refined  and 
harmonious  picture,"  says  Mrs.  Fanny 

*  We  give  the  anecdote  as  it  was  told  by  Mrs. 
Siddons  to  Northcote,  who  relates  it  in  his  Life 
of  Reynolds,  i.  246. 


158 


SAEAH  SIDDONS. 


Kemble,  "  I  have  never  seen ;  the  deli- 
cacy and  sweetness,  combined  with  the 
warmth  and  richness  of  the  coloring, 
make  it  a  very  peculiar  picture."  We 
have  the  testimony  also  of  Mrs.  Jamie- 
son  to  its  fidelity.  She  saw  Mrs.  Sid- 
dons  two  years  before  her  death  seated 
near  the  picture,  and,  looking  from  one 
to  the  other,  she  says,  "  it  was  like  her 
still  at  the  age  of  seventy."  *  An  en- 
graving after  this  painting  accompanies 
this  sketch.  The  rising  genius  of  Law- 
rence, in  his  youth,  had  already  been 
displayed  upon  a  sketch  of  Mrs.  Sid- 
dons  at  Bath,  in  hat  and  feathers,  which 
is  said  to  have  suggestedGainsborough's 
picture,  and  which  was  the  precursor  of 
the  numerous  fine  drawings  and  paint- 
ings of  the  Kemble  family  which  the 
pencil  of  the  President  of  the  Royal 
Academy  gave  to  the  world.  Mrs. 
Siddons  was  also,  at  this  early  period 
of  her  career,  in  the  fulness  of  her 
beauty,  painted  by  Hamilton  in  the 
character  of  Zara.  There  is  a  fine  en- 
graving by  Caroline  Watson,  after  a 
painting  by  Charles  Shirreff,  taken  in 
1?85,  of  Mrs.  Siddons  and  Mr.  Kemble 
in  the  characters  of  Tancred  and  Sigis- 
munda,  with  which  Mrs.  Siddons  was 
much  pleased  at  the  time,  in  one  of  her 
letters  to  Dr.  Whalley  pronouncing  it 
'l  charming."  Two  or  three  years  before, 
Cosway,  a  delightful  painter  of  women, 
produced  an  exquisite  miniature  of 
her.  Stothard,  who  considered  her  one 
of  the  two  most  beautiful  women  he- 
had  ever  known,  the  other  being  Mrs. 
Fitzherbert,  somewhat  later,  made  her 
the  subject  of  several  of  his  graceful 
theatrical  drawings. 
Turning  from  these  tributes  to  the 

*  Fulcher's  Life  of  Gainsborough,  130. 


rising  fame  of  the  actress,  to  the  record 
of  her  career  upon  the  stage,  we  find 
her  at  the  close  of  her  first  season  in 
London,  in  the  summer  of  1783,  cross- 
ing the  channel  to  perform  an  engage- 
ment in  Dublin.  She  was  accompanied 
by  Mr.  Siddons  and  Brereton  the  actor, 
whose  young  widow  subsequently 
became  Mrs.  John  Kemble.  The  inci- 
dents of  her  journey  and  of  her  first 
arrival  in  the  Irish  capital  are  related 
by  her  with  much  spirit  in  a  letter  to 
her  friend,  Dr.  Whalley.  "  We  arrived 
in  Dublin,"  she  writes,"  "the  16th  of 
June,  half -past  twelve  at  night.  There 
is  not  a  tavern  or  a  house  of  any  kind 
in  this  capital  city  of  a  rising  kingdom, 
as  they  call  themselves,  that  will  take 
a  woman  in ;  and  do  you  know  I  was 
obliged,  after  being  shut  up  in  the 
custom-house  officer's  room,  to  have 
the  things  examined,  which  room  was 
more  like  a  dungeon  than  anything 
else, — after  staying  here  above  an  hour 
and  a  half,  I  tell  you  I  was  obliged, 
sick  and  weary  as  I  was,  to  wander 
about  the  streets  on  foot,  for  the  coaches 
and  chairs  were  all  gone  off  the  stands, 
till  almost  two  o'clock  in  the  morning, 
raining  too,  as  if  heaven  and  earth 
were  coming  together.  A  pretty  be- 
ginning !  thought  I ;  but  these  people 
are  a  thousand  years  behind  us  in 
every  respect.  At  length,  Mr.  Brere- 
ton, whose  father  had  provided  a  bed 
for  him  on  his  arrival,  /entured  to  sa^r 
he  would  insist  on  having  a  bed  for 
us  at  the  house  where  he  was  to  sleep. 
Well,  we  got  to  this  place,  and  the 
lady  of  the  house  vouchsafed,  after 
many  times  telling  us  that  she  never 
took  in  ladies,  to  say  we  should  sleep 
there  that  night.  T  never  was  so  weary 


SARAH  SIDDONS. 


459 


and  so  disgusted  in  my  life."  Nor  was 
she  nmch  better  pleased  with  the  Irish 
people  on  this  first  hasty  acquaintance ; 
she  thought  them  ostentatious  and  in- 
sincere; "in  their  ideas  of  finery  very 
like  the  French,  but  not  so  cleanly,  and 
tenacious  of  their  country  to  a  degree 
of  folly  that  is  very  laughable."  This, 
however,  is  the  expression  of  a  familiar 
letter.  She  was  well  received  on  the 
stage,  where  her  brother,  John  Kemble, 
making  his  way  upward  from  the  pro- 
vinces, was  well  established  in  popular 
favor.  Her  short  engagement  brought 
her  a  thousand  pounds. 

Her  second  season  in  London,  com- 
mencing in  October,  like  the  first, 
opened  with  Isabella,  the  king  and 
queen,  with  several  members  of  the 
royal  family  honoring  the  occasion  by 
their  presence.  She  acted  her  former 
characters  with  the  addition  of  two 
Shakespearean  performances,  Isabella 
in  "  Measure  for  Measure,"  and  Lady 
Constance  in  "King  John."  In  the 
former,  she  was  the  embodiment  in  her 
lofty  bearing  of  the  noblest  principle, 
and  in  the  latter  of  heroic  action  com- 
bined with  the  tenderest  emotions. 
The  play  was  brought  upon  the  stage 
by  request  of  the  king,  who  wished  to 
see  the  brother  and  sister  acting  to- 
gether ;  for  Kemble,  led  by  the  fame 
of  the  Siddons,  was  now  performing 
with  much  eclat  at  Drury  Lane.  King 
John  became  one  of  his  accepted  char- 
acters, as  Constance  was  peculiarly 
suited  to  the  genius  of  Mrs.  Siddons. 
As  evidence  of  the  realism  with  which 
she  entered  into  the  part,  throwing  her 
whole  life  for  the  time  into  it,  a  trait 
of  her  acting  which  made  it  the  really 
great  thing  it  was,  we  may  cite  a  por- 


tion of  her  remarks  on  the  perform- 
ance. "  Whenever,"  she  writes,  "  I  was 
called  upon  to  personate  the  character 
of  Constance,  I  never,  from  the  begin 
ning  of  the  play  to  the  end  of  my  part 
in  it,  once  suffered  my  dressing-room 
door  to  be  closed,  in  order  that  my  at 
tention  might  be  constantly  fixed  on 
those  distressing  events,  which,  by  this 
means,  I  could  plainly  hear  going  on 
upon  the  stage,  the  terrible  effects  of 
which  progress  were  to  be  represented 
by  me.  Moreover,  I  never  omitted  to 
place  myself,  with  Arthur  in  my  hand, 
to  hear  the  march,  when,  upon  the 
reconciliation  of  England  and  France, 
they  enter  the  gates  of  Angiers  to  rat- 
ify the  contract  of  marriage  between 
the  Dauphin  and  the  Lady  Blanche ; 
because  the  sickening  sounds  of  that 
march  would  usually  cause  the  bitter 
tears  of  rage,  disappointment,  betrayed 
confidence,  baffled  ambition,  and,  above 
all,  the  agonizing  feelings  of  maternal 
affection,  to  gush  into  my  eyes.  In 
short,  the  spirit  of  the  whole  drama 
took  possession  of  my  mind  and  frame, 
by  my  attention  being  incessantly  riv- 
eted to  the  passing  scenes."  The  entire 
analysis  of  the  character  of  Constance 
in  reference  to  its  demands  upon  the 
actress,  from  which  this  passage  is 
taken,  shows  the  nicest  discrimination 
and  most  thorough  appreciation  of  the 
drama  of  Shakespeare.  "  I  cannot  con- 
ceive," she  says,  "in  the  whole  range 
of  dramatic  character,  a  greater  diffi- 
culty than  that  of  representing  this 
grand  creature.  .  .  Her  gorgeous 
affliction,  if  such  an  expression  is  al- 
lowable, is  of  so  sublime  and  so  intense 
a  character,  that  the  personation  of  ita 
grandeur ;  with  the  utterance  of  its 


4:60 


SAEAH   SLDDONS. 


rapid  and  astonishing  eloquence,  almost 
overwhelms  the  mind  that  meditates 
its  realization,  and  utterly  exhausts  the 
frame  which  endeavors  to  express  its 
agitations." 

At  the  end  of  her  second  season  in 
London,  Mrs.  Sid  dons,  in  May,  1784, 
played  an  engagement  of  twelve  nights 
in  Edinburgh,  in  which  the  heads  of 
some  of  the  gravest  folk  of  that  grave 
metropolis  were  fairly  turned  by  her 
exhibitions  of  pathos  and  distress  in 
Belvidera,  Mrs.  Beverly,  Isabella  and 
the  like  soul-harassing  parts.  Dr. 
Blair,  Hume,  Beattie,  Mackenzie,  the 
author  of  "  The  Man  of  Feeling,"  were 
among  the  appreciators  of  her  genius, 
with  Home,  who  attended  the  theatre 
to  witness  her  performance  in  his  tra- 
gedy, "  Douglas."  The  story  is  told  of  a 
venerable  and  highly  respectable  gen- 
tleman of  the  old  town  and  old  school, 
who  was  drawn  to  the  theatre  for  the 
gratification  of  his  daughter  to  see  "  Ve- 
nice Preserved."  He  sat  with  perfect 
composure  through  the  first  act  and 
into  the  second,  when  he  asked  his 
daughter,  "Which  was  the  woman 
Siddons  ? "  As  there  was  but  one  fe- 
male in  the  play,  she  had  no  difficulty 
in  answering  the  question.  Nothing 
more  occurred  till  the  catastrophe, 
when  he  was  moved  to  the  inquiry, 
"Is  this  a  comedy  or  a  tragedy?" 
"  Why,  bless  you,  father,  a  tragedy." 
"  So  I  thought,  for  I  am  beginning  to 
feel  a  commotion."  Even  so  with  the 
audiences  at  the  beginning.  The  actress 
was  quite  disheartened  at  the  cold  re- 
ception of  her  most  thrilling  passages, 
till  after  one  desperate  effort  she  paused 
for  a  reply.  It  came  at  last,  when  tlie 
silence  was  broken  by  a  single  voice 


exclaiming,  "  That's  no  bad ! "  a  home- 
ly native  tribute,  which  was  the  signal 
for  unbounded  applause.  The  oppres- 
sion of  the  heat  was  so  great  in  the 
crowded  and  ill-ventilated  theatre,  that 
an  illness  which  spread  through  the 
town  was  humorously  attributed  to 
this  cause,  and  was  called  the  Siddona 
fever.  In  fact,  the  audiences  were  now 
so  moved  that  the  passion  for  fainting 
at  her  performances  ran  into  a  fashion- 
able mania.  There  was  a  humorous 
surgeon  of  much  distinction  then  in 
Edinburgh,  familiarly  called  Sandy 
Wood,  who  had  a  shrewd  wit  in  prob- 
ing the  follies  of  his  patients  and  the 
town.  He  was  withal,  ^a,  great  ad- 
mirer of  the  acting  of  Mrs.  Siddons. 
One  night,  when  he  was  at  the  theatre, 
he  was  called  from  his  snug  post  of 
observation  in  the  pit  to  attend  upon 
the  hysterics  of  one  of  the  fashionable 
ladies  who  were  falling  around  him. 
On  his  way  through  the  thronged 
house,  a  friend  said  to  him,  alluding 
to  Mrs.  Siddons,  "  This  is  glorious  act- 
ing, Sandy,"  to  which  Wood,  looking 
round  at  the  fainting  and  screaming  la- 
dies in  the  boxes,  answered,  "  Yes,  and  a 
d — d  deal  o't  too."  The  rage  for  seeing 
her  was  so  great,  that  one  day  there  wert 
more  than  twenty-five  hundred  appli- 
cations for  about  six  hundred  places. 
Campbell  tells  us  how  a  poor  servant- 
girl,  with  a  basket  of  greens  on  her 
arm,  one  day  stopped  near  her  in  the 
High  Street,  and  hearing  her  speak, 
said,  "  Ah !  weel  do  I  ken  that  sweet 
voice,  that  made  me  greet  sae  sair  the 
streen."  The  engagement  produced 
her,  by  share  of  the  house,  a  benefit 
and  subscriptions,  more  than  a  thou- 
sand pounds.  The  summer  of  the  next 


SAKAH  SIDDONS. 


461 


year  slie  repeated  her  visit  to  Edin- 
burgh with  like  success.  There  is  an 
interesting  memorial  of  her  represent- 
ation of  Lady  Randolph  in  "  Douglas," 
in  one  of  the  etchings  of  Kay,  the  bar- 
ber caricaturist,  who  has  left  us  such  a 
wonderful  exhibition  of  the  humors 
of  the  old  town.  The  representation 
was  witnessed  by  the  author  himself. 
After  her  first  engagement  at  Edin- 
burgh, Mrs.  Siddons  proceeded  on  a 
second  visit  to  Dublin,  where  she  was, 
as  before,  greatly  admired  upon  the 
stage,  and  in  private  life  received  dis- 
tinguished attentions  from  the  first 
families,  particularly  from  her  early 
Cheltenham  friend,  the  Honorable  Miss 
Boyle,  who  had  now  become  Lady 
O'Neill,  and  was  living  in  great  mag- 
nificence at  Shane's  Castle,  where  there 
appears  to  have  been  a  constant  round 
of  feasting  and  festivity.  "  The  luxury 
of  this  establishment,"  she  writes,  "  al- 
most inspired  the  recollections  of  an 
Arabian  Night's  entertainment."  Her 
Isabella  in  the  "  Fatal  Marriage,"  with 
which  she  opened,  was  as  great  a  suc- 
cess as  it  had  been  in  London.  She 
encountered,  however,  some  difficulties 
in  the  conceit  of  the  manager,  Daly, 
who  appears  to  have  been  mortified 
at  the  indifferent  impression  his  per- 
sonal claims  made  upon  her.  His  van- 
ity was  wounded  in  his  being  com- 
pelled by  the  actress  to  stand  aside  on 
the  stage  when  she  was  acting  Falcon- 
bridge  in  "  King  John,"  that  Lady  Con- 
stance might  secure  one  of  the  best  ef- 
fects in  the  play.  While  profiting  by 
the  proceeds  of  the  very  successful  en- 
gagement, he  was  wounding  the  per- 
former who  was  filling  his  pockets,  by 
encouraging  the  newspapers  in  per- 


sonal attacks  upon  her  character.  Her 
life  was  always  so  pure  that  there  was 
no  room  for  scandal  on  the  score  of 
morality ;  but  she  was  charged  with 
avarice  in  regard  to  other  actors,  and 
with  especial  indifference  to  the  claims 
of  the  superannuated  Digges,  an  old 
favorite  in  Dublin,  for  whom  she  was 
expected  to  give  a  benefit-night.  There 
was  some  difficulty  in  making  the  ar- 
rangement for  this,  and  after  it  came  off, 
it  was  said  that  she  exacted  fifty  pounds 
out  of  the  proceeds  for  her  services. 
The  complaint  was  altogether  false, 
for  she  had  taken  nothing,  but  it  filled 
the  newspapers  and,  aggravated  by  va- 
rious petty  misunderstandings  and 
much  downright  injustice,  went  before 
her  to  London. 

On  her  re-appearance  in  the  metrop- 
olis at  Drury  Lane,  in  the  autumn  of 
1784,  in  the  "  Gamester,"  with  John 
Kemble,  she  was  received  with  a  tem- 
pest of  hootings  and  hissings,  which 
utterly  prevented  her  being  heard. 
Being  led  from  the  stage  by  her  broth- 
er, she  fainted  in  his  arms.  "  After  I 
was  tolerably  restored  to  myself,"  she 
says  in  her  memoranda,  "I  was  in- 
duced, by  the  persuasions  of  my  hus- 
band, my  brother  and  Mr.  Sheridan,  to 
present  myself  again  before  that  audi- 
ence by  whom  I  had  been  so  savagely 
treated,  and  before  whom,  but  in  con- 
sideration of  my  children,  I  would 
have  never  appeared  again."  The  play 
was  then  suffered  to  proceed  without 
further  interruption,  all  this  brutality 
being  simply  an  exhibition  of  idle  and 
unprovoked  hostility.  It  was  one  of 
the  incidents  of  the  old  British  stage — 
and  the  American  theatre  has  had  dis- 
graceful examples  of  the  same  license 


462 


SARAH  SIDDONS. 


algo  —  that   the   performers,  however 
worthy,  were  at  the  mercy  of  any  small 
party  or  clique  who  might  choose  to 
insult  them.     During  the  remainder  of 
the  season,  Mrs.  Siddons  was  received 
with  the  utmost  enthusiasm,  adding  to 
her  characters,  Zara  in  Hill's  tragedy 
after   Voltaire,    Matilda    in   Cumber- 
land's "  Carmelite,"  and  in  'February, 
1785,  appearing  in  Lady  Macbeth.   She 
had  acted  the  part  frequently  in  her 
early  days  in  the  provinces,  and  doubt- 
less not  without  the  impression  of  her 
peculiar  powers ;  but  it  was  now  to  as- 
sume new  proportions  on   a  grander 
scene,  and  become  the  one  permanent, 
lasting  representation  of   her  genius. 
When  we  think  now  of  Mrs.  Siddons 
on  the  stage,  it  is  in  the  character  of 
Lady  Macbeth  that  she  first  presents 
herself.     In  grandeur,  in  pathos,  in  all 
that  inspires  the  imagination  or  touch- 
es the  feelings,  it  has  never  been  sur- 
passed.    Happily,  we  have  from  her 
own  hand  an  elaborate  analysis  of  the 
character,  entering  fully  into  its  finer 
poetical  and  philosophical  elements — 
a  rare  thing  to  proceed  from  an  actress 
or  any  actor,  for  the  profession  is  won- 
derfully tied  down  to  the  business  tra- 
ditions and   matter-of-fact  notions  of 
the  stage.     It  was  the  merit  of  Mrs. 
Siddons  that  she  lifted  her  conceptions 
into  the  world  of  ideas,  and  in  her 
grand  Shakespearean  parts  shed  a  su- 
pernatural light  upon  the  actual.     She 
regarded  Lady  Macbeth  as  a  lofty  im- 
personation of  ambition  in  its  highest 
and  most  sublimated  form,  allied  in 
its  keenness  and  subtlety  to  the  pure 
spirit  of  evil  in  the  ghostly  creatures 
whose  breath  is  the  very  atmosphere 
of  the  tragedy.      Everything  shrinks 


and  disappears  in  the  presence  of  thia 
concentration  of  soul  and  intellect. 
Pity  for  the  time  is  suppressed  till  the 
fatal  act  is  accomplished.  Then  cornea 
remorse,  and  the  soul  of  the  spectator, 
as  it  has  been  excited  by  terror,  is  to 
be  moved  in  its  lowest  depths  by  pity. 
To  relieve  this  picture  of  incarnated 
evil,  she  fancied  Lady  Macbeth  ex- 
ceedingly beautiful,  thus  casting  an 
additional  spell  over  the  feeble  mind 
of  her  husband,  and  the  beauty,  in  her 
view, — and  this  was  an  original  con- 
ception with  her,— was  of  a  very  deli- 
cate feminine  quality.  Here,  too,  her 
own  loveliness  and  sensibility  w^re  re- 
flected. Lady  Macbeth  .was  no  mascu- 
line virago  in  her  hands. 

Such  was  Mrs.  Siddons'  conception 
of  the  character  of  Lady  Macbeth,  pow- 
erful alike  in  its  strength  and  weak- 
ness. "With  what  spirit  she  entered 
into  it  on  the  stage,  the  testimony  of 
her  contemporaries  bears  abundant  wit- 
ness. How  she  approached  it  may  be 
gathered  from  the  impression  made 
upon  her  by  her  first  study  of  the  part 
in  early  life  for  some  provincial  theatre. 
"  It  was  my  custom,"  she  says, "  to  study 
my  character  at  night,  when  all  the  do- 
mestic cares  and  business  of  the  day 
were  over.  On  the  night  preceding 
that  in  which  I  was  to  appear  in  this 
part  for  the  first  time,  I  shut  myself 
up,  as  usual,  when  all  the  family  were 
retired,  and  commenced  my  study  of 
Lady  Macbeth.  As  the  character  is 
very  short,  I  thought  I  should  soon 
accomplish  it.  Being  then  only  twenty 
years  of  age,  I  believed,  as  many  others 
do  believe,  that  little  more  was  neo^s 
sary  than  to  get  the  words  into  my 
head ;  for  the  necessity  of  disorimina 


SAEAH  SIDDONS. 


463 


fcion  and  the  development  of  character, 
at  that  time  of  my  life,  had  scarcely 
entered  into  my  imagination.  But,  to 
proceed.  I  went  on  with  tolerable 
composure,  in  the  silence  of  the  night, 
a  night  I  never  can  forget,  till  I  came 
to  the  assassination  scene,  when  the 
horrors  of  the  scene  rose  to  a  degree 
that  made  it  impossible  for  me  to  get 
further.  I  snatched  up  my  candle  and 
hurried  out  of  the  room  in  a  paroxysm 
of  terror.  My  dress  was  of  silk,  and 
the  rustling  of  it,  as  I  ascended  the 
stairs  to  go  to  bed,  seemed  to  my  panic- 
struck  fancy  like  the  movement  of  a 
spectre  pursuing  me.  At  last  I  reached 
my  chamber,  where  I  found  my  hus- 
band fast  asleep.  I  clapt  my  candle- 
stick down  upon  the  table,  without 
the  power  of  putting  the  candle  out ; 
and  I  threw  myself  on  my  bed,  with- 
out daring  to  stay  even  to  take  off  my 
clothes."  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds  took  a 
particular  interest  in  her  performance 
of  the  character.  He  was  present  at 
his  seat  in  the  orchestra,  privileged 
to  sit  there  on  account  of  his  deaf- 
ness, at  the  first  representation  in 
London,  and  devised  the  dress  worn 
by  the  actress  in  the  sleep-walking 
scene.* 

Mrs.  Siddons'  Lady  Macbeth  was 
shortly  followed  by  her  appearance  in 
Desdemona,  which  she  acted  with  great 
feeling  and  tenderness.  "  You  have  no 
idea,"  she  writes  to  Dr.  Whalley, "  how 
the  innocence  and  playful  simplicity 
of  the  character  have  laid  hold  on  the 
hearts  of  people.  I  am  very  much 
flattered  by  this,  as  nobody  has  ever 
done  anything  with  it  before."  This 


*  Boaden's  Life  of  Kemble,  i.  oh.  .10. 
&  Taylor's  Reynolds,  i.  384. 


Leslie 


was  succeeded  by  the  still  gentler  part 
of  Rosalind  in  "  As  You  Like  It."  Miss 
Seward,  ever  a  diligent  attendant  upon 
her  performances  in  her  visits  to  Lon- 
don, writes  to  Dr. Whalley,  in  her  some- 
what affected  way,  "  It  was  not  given 
me  to  taste  the  luxury  of  Siddonian 
sorrow,  but  I  saw  the  glorious  creature 
in  Rosalind.  In  spite  of  the  disadvan- 
tage of  a  very  vilely  chosen  dress,  I  en- 
tirely agree  with  you,  against  the  cla- 
mor of  the  multitude,  that  her  smiles 
are  as  fascinating  as  her  frowns  are 
magnificent,  as  her  tears  are  irresisti- 
ble." Miss  Burney,  who  witnessed  her 
acting  in  this  part  at  a  later  occasion, 
says,  "  She  looked  beautifully,  but  too 
large  for  that  shepherd's  dress;  and 
her  gayety  sits  not  naturally  upon  her 
— it  seems  more  like  disguised  gravity. 
I  must  own  my  admiration  for  her  is 
confined  to  her  tragic  powers;  and 
there  it  is  raised  so  high  that  I  feel 
mortified,  in  a  degree,  to  see  her  so 
much  fainter  attempts  and  success  in 
comedy."  Yet,  even  after  her  reputa- 
tion was  paramount  and  fully  estab- 
lished in  her  great  tragic  parts,  she 
,was  often  called  upon  to  appear  in 
comedy,  in  such  parts  as  Mrs.  Love- 
more  in  the  "  Way  to  Keep  Him," 
Lady  Restless  in  "  All  in  the  Wrong," 
Mrs.  Oakley  in  "The  Jealous  Wife," 
and  what  not.  Where  the  characters 
of  genteel  comedy  touched  upon  the 
pathetic  or  bordered  upon  tragedy  as 
in  Lady  Townley,  she  was  of  course  in 
her  element.  Her  letters  show  that 
she  had  a  ready  sense  of  humor  and  no 
contemptible  faculty  of  giving  it  ex- 
pression in  writing ;  but  her  best  op- 
portunities were  unquestionably  in  tra- 
gedy. V" 


464 


SAEAH  SIDDOffS. 


The  revival  of  "  Henry  VIII.,"  after 
an  absence  from  the  stage  of  half  a 
century,  by  John  Kemble  at  Drury 
Lane  in  1788,  afforded  Mrs.  Siddons 
the  opportunity  which  Dr.  Johnson 
had  so  eagerly  desired  of  making  her 
appearance  in  Queen  Katharine,  which 
thenceforth  became  one  of  her  leading 
impersonations.  It  fairly  ranks  with 
Lady  Macbeth  in  her  line  of  Shake- 
spearean characters.  It  was  grand  and 
elevated  throughout  in  all  its  quick 
transitions  of  emotion  from  withering 
scorn  and  rebuke  to  sorrow  and  suf- 
fering. Every  gradation  of  passion 
was  marked  with  an  artist's  touch  and 
those  impulses  of  natural  feeling  which 
suggested  an  almost  absolute  identifi- 
cation with  the  royal  victim.  One  of 
her  most  striking  attitudes  is  preserved 
in  the  famous  Kernble  picture  by  Har- 
low,  of  the  trial  scene,  as  it  was  repre- 
sented at  a  later  period  at  Covent  Gar- 
den. The  picture  was  a  study  from 
the  life,  the  artist,  by  the  advice  of 
Sir  Thomas  Lawrence,  taking  his  posi- 
tion in  the  front  row  of  the  pit  for 
several  nights  of  the  performance,  that 
he  might  study  the  expression  of  the 
countenance  in  action.  John  Kemble 
appears  in  this  as  Cardinal  Wolsey; 
Charles  Kemble  is  seated  as  secretary 
at  the  council-table. 

It  is  surprising,  as  in  the  case  of 
Garrick,  how  much  of  her  time  was 
wasted  upon  inferior  original  plays. 
There  seemed  to  be  in  her  day  a  kind 
of  recognized  necessity  that  everybody 
who  put  pen  to  paper  should  produce 
a  tragedy  for  the  stage ;  and  Mrs.  Sid- 
dons,  as  a  favorite  in  society  as  well  as 
with  the  public,  was  marked  out  for  its 
performance.  There  were  at  various  sea- 


sons, among  others,  Prince  Hoare,  with 
his  forgotten,  "Julia,  or  Such  Things 
Were,"  which  even  Mrs.  Siddons  could 
keep  hardly  a  week  upon  the  stage ;  Vi- 
tellia  in  Jephson's  "  Conspiracy,"  acted 
to  an  empty  house  on  the  second  night ; 
Poet  Laureate  Pye's  dismal  "Ade- 
laide;" Miss  Burney's  unfortunate 
"Edwy  and  Elgiva,"  which  expired 
on  its  first  performance  amidst  roars 
of  laughter;  even  good  Dr.  Whalley 
must  bring  his  friend  to  recite  his 
hopeless  vers^  in  "  The  Castle  of  Mont- 
val,"  the  plot  of  which  was  unfortu- 
nately anticipated  by  the  "  Castle 
Spectre," — so  that  went  out  after  a 
few  nights  as  a  twice-told  tale,  though 
Miss  Seward  wrote  to  congratulate  the 
author  on  its  success,  having  heard 
from  numbers  of  her  acquaintance  that 
it  was  "  charming."  In  one  instance, 
at  least,  as  may  be  read  in  the  "  Whal- 
ley Correspondence,"  with  admiration 
of  her  keen  appreciation  of  the  rigor- 
ous requirements  of  the  drama,  Mrs.  Sid- 
dons  made  a  determined  stand, — in 
reference  to  the  production  of  a  play 
by  a  younger  member  of  the  Greathead 
family,  among  whom  she  had,  as  will 
be  remembered,  been  domesticated  at 
the  outset  of  her  career  as  a  lady's- 
maid,  and  from  whom  she  had  since 
received  various  hospitalities  and  at- 
tentions. In  another  instance,  also 
her  good  judgment  befriended  her. 
She  was  cast  to  appear  in  Ireland's  pre- 
tended Shakespeare  tragedy  "Vorti- 
gern,"  and  was  actually  engaged  in 
studying  a  part ;  but,  at  her  particular 
request,  she  was  excused  and  escaped 
the  mortification  suffered  by  her  broth- 
ers who  appeared  in  the  play.  When 
Master  Betty  held  possession  of  the 


SAEAH  SIDDONS. 


465 


town,  slie  quietly  stood  aside  and  let 
that  foolish  mania  run  its  day,  con- 
tenting herself  with  the  remark  to  an 
English  nobleman,  who  praised  his  act- 
ing, "My  lord,  he  is  a  very  clever, 
pretty  boy,  but  nothing  more." 

The  remaining  career  on  the  stage 
of  Mrs.  Siddons  was  varied  by  the  vi- 
cissitudes common  to  the  profession, 
the  fortunes  of  Drury  Lane  manage- 
ment under  the  direction  of  Sheridan, 
and  the  annoyances  attending  the  open- 
ing of  the  new  Covent  Garden  Theatre 
during  the  disgraceful  O.  P.  riots.  In 
private  life  she  was  more  than  ever  an 
object  of  attention  and  interest,  passing 
her  summer  holidays  at  the  country 
seats  of  her  distinguished  friends, 
when  she  was  not  called  by  new  en- 
gagements to  Edinburgh  or  Dublin. 
At  times  she  suffered  from  ill-health, 
and  family  losses  preyed  upon  her. 
She  suffered  much  from  the  loss  of  a 
daughter,  and  a  few  years  later,  in 
1808,  her  husband  died  at  Bath.  She 
had  acquired  an  independent  property 
by  her  exertions  on  the  stage,  and, 
though  still  holding  her  old  supremacy 
in  her  familiar  round  of  characters,  be- 
gan to  think  seriously  of  retirement.  At 
the  close  of  the  season  in  1812,  on  the 
29th  of  June,  she  took  a  farewell  leave 
of  the  stage  at  Covent  Garden  in  Lady 
Macbeth.  This,  however,  was  not  her 
last  appearance  on  the  stage.  The  fol- 
lowing season  she  gave  readings  from 
Milton  and  Shakespeare  in  public  in 
London,  which  were  much  admired. 
She  also  read  by  special  invitation  be- 
fore the  royal  family  at  Frogmore,  and 
private  parties  of  the  university  folk 
at  Oxford  and  Cambridge.  She  per- 


formed in  1813,  three  times;  for  the 
Covent  Garden  Theatrical  Fund,  at 
Charles  Kemble's  benefit,  and  at  Drury 
Lane  for  the  fund  of  the  theatre.  In 
1814,  when  France  was  again  open  to 
British  travellers,  she  visited  Paris. 
The  following  year,  she  was  called  to 
mourn  the  loss  of  her  son  Henry,  who 
died  at  the  age  of  forty,  while  man- 
ager of  the  Edinburgh  theatre.  This 
event  brought  her  to  the  stage  again. 
She  acted  ten  nights  at  Edinburgh  the 
same  year  for  the  benefit  of  the  family. 
In  1816,  she  acted  for  a  few  nights  in 
London,  at  the  command  of  the  Prin- 
cess Charlotte.  Her  last  performance 
was  in  June,  1819,  in  Lady  Randolph, 
for  the  benefit  of  Charles  Kemble.  In 
1821,  she  travelled  to  Switzerland  to 
visit  her  brother,  John  Philip  Kem- 
ble, who  had  retired  broken  in  health 
to  end  his  days  at  Lausanne.  Her 
later  years  were  passed  in  quiet  retire- 
ment. In  1829,  she  witnessed  the  suc- 
cessful first  appearance  of  her  niece, 
Fanny  Kemble,  and  was  affected  by  it 
to  tears.  That  night  at  Covent  Gar- 
den must  have  brought  before  her  the 
whole  of  her  own  theatrical  career. 
She  did  not  long  survive.  She  had 
been  for  several  years  subject  to  at- 
tacks of  erysipelas.  At  the  last  the 
malady  increased  in  force ;  a  fever  set 
in,  and  on  the  8th  of  June,  1831,  at 
the  age  of  seventy-six,  she  expired  at 
her  residence  in  London.  Her  remains 
were  interred  in  the  church  burial- 
ground  at  Paddington.  A  statue  of 
her,  by  Chantrey,  the  gift  of  the  emi- 
nent tragedian,  Macready,  stands  by 
the  side  of  her  brother's  monument  in 
Westminster  Abbey. 


59 


ALEXANDER     VON     HUMBOLDT. 


T71REDERIC  HENRY  ALEXAN- 
DER  VON  HUMBOLDT  was 

born  at  Berlin,  the  capital  of  Prussia, 
on  the  14th  of  September,  1769.  His 
father,  the  baron  Alexander  George  von 
Humboldt,  a  man  of  property  and  in- 
fluence in  the  country,  having  been  in 
the  service  of  Frederic  the  Great  in  the 
Seven  Years'  War,  and  subsequently  at 
the  court  of  that  monarch,  married  the 
widow  of  Baron  von  Holwede,  a  lady 
of  French  descent,  her  family  of  Colomb 
having  emigrated  from  Burgundy  to 
take  up  their  residence  in  Germany,  in 
consequence  of  the  revocation  of  the 
Edict  of  Nantes.  The  Baron  Alexander 
von  Humboldt  had  consequently  Hu- 
guenot blood  in  his  veins.  He  was  the 
second  of  two  sons,  his  elder  brother 
"William,  the  celebrated  philologist, 
having  been  born  in  Potsdam,  before  his 
father's  removal  to  Berlin,  in  1767.  The 
youth  of  the  two  boys  was  passed  at  the 
old  castle  of  Tegel,  a  romantic  residence 
occupied  by  their  parents,  situated  in 
the  vicinity  of  Berlin  in  a  beautiful 
neighborhood  of  varied  natural  scenery, 
a  former  royal  hunting  establishment 
of 'Frederic  the  Great.  Here  the  early 
education  of  the  brothers  was  entirely 
conducted  by  tutors,  of  whom  there  is 

(466) 


always  a  good  supply  in  Germany 
men  of  learning  and  character,  with 
those  peculiar  qualities  which  fit  them 
to  influence  the  youthful  mind.  Major 
von  Humboldt,  the  father,  found  such 
a  one  in  Campe,  a  field  chaplain  of  a 
regiment  at  Potsdam,  whom  he  took 
into  his  house  as  the  instructor  of  his 
The  choice  was  well  made,  for 


sons. 


Campe  developed  faculties  which  raised 
him  to  a  high  rank  in  the  critical  lite- 
rature of  Germany ;  and  not  only  ex- 
ercised a  powerful  influence  over  his 
pupils  in  their  childhood,  but  became 
in  their  maturer  years  their  friend  and 
intimate  during  his  life.  He  was  a 
man  impressed  with  the  new  ideas  of 
the  time  encouraged  by  the  writings 
of  Rousseau  on  the  subject  of  educa- 
tion, making  it  not  a  matter  of  slavish 
routine,  but  a  living  principle  of  use- 
ful, active  inquiry.  "  He  had  plainly 
seen,"  writes  Humboldt's  biographer, 
Klencke,  "  that  the  mode  of  education 
and  tuition  till  then  adopted  in  fami- 
lies and  institutions,  only  tended  to 
develop  the  memory,  not  the  mind  of 
the  student ;  he  opposed  from  the  first 
the  mechanical  training  of  youth,  and 
endeavored  to  develop  the  susceptibil- 
ity of  the  youthful  mind  and  spirit  by 


. 


ALEXANDER  VON  HUMBOLDT. 


461 


a  perception  of  the  world,  of  foreign 
nations,  men  and  manners.  Could  not 
then,  this  man,  who  edited  Robinson 
Crusoe,  and  enriched  the  juvenile  li- 
brary with  imaginative  delineations  of 
bold  voyages,  could  he  not,  as  Hum- 
boldt  s  first  teacher,  have  influenced 
the  imagination  and  the  reason  of  his 
pupils,  and  laid  the  foundation  in  Al- 
exander for  his  love  for  exploratory 
voyages  in  distant  regions  ? " 

This  teacher  was,  however,  but  a 
year  in  the  old  castle  when  he  was 
called  away  for  more  public  employ- 
ment in  the  work  of  education.  As 
Alexander  was  but  seven  years  .  old 
when  he  left,  his  influence  must  have 
been  limited;  but  it  was  something 
even  then  to  avoid  depressing  condi- 
tions, and  be  put  upon  the  right  road  to 
learning.  Campe  was  soon  succeeded 
by  another  tutor,  a  young  man  named 
Christian  Kunth,  so  poor  that  he  had 
to  discontinue  his  academical  studies 
for  lack  of  means,  yet  possessed  of  an 
extraordinary  knowledge  of  German, 
Latin  and  French  literature,  acquisi- 
tions which,  to  the  credit  of  the  coun- 
try, gave  him  a  good  position  in  the 
best  German  society,  where  Major  von 
Humboldt  became  acquainted  with 
him.  Kunth  had  a  genius  and  disposi- 
tion for  universality  of  knowledge,  and 
endeavored,  we  are  told,  to  make  every- 
thing within  his  reach  at  Berlin  avail- 
able and  useful  for  the  development 
of  his  pupils,  while  he  avoided  any- 
thing like  shallow  pretensions  to  learn- 
ing. From  the  wide  field  before  them 
his  scholars  were  thus  enabled  to  se- 
lect from  the  mass  of  human  knowledge 
what  was  best  adapted  to  their  pow- 
ers and  dispositions.  Consequently, 


while  William  pursued  with  avidity 
the  more  subjective  studies  of  philoso- 
phy and  especially  of  language,  Alex- 
ander followed  his  inclination  in  the 
pursuit  of  the  natural  sciences.  The 
death  of  their  father,  in  1779,  left  the 
boys,  under  the  direction  of  their 
mother,  more  particularly  to  the  care 
of  this  instructor,  who  soon  had  an  im- 
portant assistant  in  a  now  constant 
visitor  to  the  household,  the  family 
physician,  Dr.  Heim,  who,  being  expe- 
rienced in  botany,  taught  that  science 
to  the  brothers  according  to  the  new 
principles  of  Linnaeus.  It  is  said  that 
in  these  lessons  he  was  much  more  im- 
pressed with  the  capacity  of  William 
than  of  Alexander,  who,  indeed,  at  one 
time  was  considered  by  mother  and 
tutor,  "  not  at  all  fitted  for  study." 

When  Alexander  was  about  four- 
teen, the  brothers,  the  better  to  pursue 
their  education,  took  up  their  residence 
at  Berlin.  At  this  time  and  later,  AL 
exander  was  delicate  in  health,  which 
has  been  attributed  to  his  earnest  ef- 
forts to  keep  pace  with  his  hardier  and 
more  advanced  brother  in  his  intel- 
lectual acquirements.  Other  teachers 
were  now  employed  in  assistance  of 
Kunth,  eminent  instructors  in  Greek, 
philosophy,  law  and  political  economy, 
who  carried  the  pupils  through  private 
courses  of.  lectures.  Their  social  ad- 
vantages in  Berlin,  from  the  standing 
of  the  family,  doubtless  also  greatly 
aided  their  mental  development.  Some 
years  earlier  than  the  period  of  which 
we  are  now  speaking,  in  the  lifetime 
of  their  father,  Goethe  had  visited  the 
castle  of  Tegel  and  seen  the  two  boys, 
the  associates  in  his  studies  of  aftei 
life.  Being  now  fully  prepared  .or  an 


470 


ALEXANDER  VON  IIUMBOLDT. 


Southern  hemisphere  was  at  that  time 
projected  by  the  French  government, 
and  apparently  on  the  point  of  being 
realized.  The  plan  was  to  visit  the 
Spanish  possessions  of  South  America, 
from  the  mouth  of  the  river  Plata  to 
Quito  and  the  isthmus  of  Panama.  The 
voyage  was  to  extend  to  the  archi- 
pelago of  the  Pacific  and  return  by  the 
Cape  of  Good  Hope.  Humboldt  ob- 
tained permission  to  join  in  this  sur- 
vey, which  was  to  have  the  services  of 
the  naturalists,  Michaux  and  Bon- 
pland.  But  here  again  the  war  inter- 
fered. The  funds  to  be  diverted  to 
this  purpose  were  needed  by  Napoleon 
for  new  military  operations,  and  the 
voyage  of  exploration  was  abandoned. 
Disappointed  in  this,  but  determined 
at  all  hazards  to  carry  oat  the  plans 
of  his  life,  he  formed  an  engagement 
with  Bonpland  to  visit  an  unexplored 
portion  of  the  Mediterranean  coast  of 
Africa,  and  thence  extend  the  jour- 
ney to  Egypt.  They  were,  by  an  ar- 
rangement with  a  Swedish  consul,  to 
embark  at  Marseilles  on  a  national 
vessel  of  that  government,  appointed 
to  carry  presents  to  the  Dey  of  Algiers ; 
but  delays  interposed ;  the  barbarous 
hostilities  of  the  authorities  at  Tunis 
were  reported  as  alarming,  and  a  visit 
to  Spain  was  meanwhile  undertaken  in 
place  of  the  projected  voyage,  still  with 
a  view  to  wider  plans  of  travel.  The 
hospitable  reception  which  the  travel- 
lers experienced  at  Madrid  might  well 
have  induced  them  to  prolong  their 
stay  in  that  country;  but  they  had 
other  objects  before  them.  Possessed 
of  sufficient  wealth  for  the  purpose, 
Humboldt  resolved  on  his  own  ac- 
.•ount  to  visit  the  interior  of  South 


America.  His  plans  were  presented 
to  the  court,  and  every  facility  waa 
granted  him  towards  carrying  cutjiis 
intentions.  At  length  he  was  to  start 
on  his  grand  voyage ;  but  it  was  im- 
peded to  the  last, — for,  on  his  arrival 
at  Corunna,  the  port  of  embarkation,  he 
found  it  blockaded  by  English  cruis- 
ers, cutting  off  the  communication  be- 
tween Spain  and  her  colonies.  Watch- 
ing, however,  an  opportunity,  the  cor- 
vette "Pizarro,"  which  was  to  carry  them 
to  Havana  and  Mexico,  was  enabled  to 
set  sail  on  the  4th  of  June,  1799,  an 
important  date  in  the  life  of  our  travel- 
lers, for  it  was  the  commencement  of 
the  realization  of  his  long  cherished 
schemes.  The  details  of  the  voyage,  as 
related  by  himself,  are  of  the  highest 
interest,  not  more  for  their  constant  ex- 
hibition of  sea  phenomena  new  to  the 
travellers,  but  for  the  simple  and  earn 
est  spirit  which  gives  life  to  the  narra- 
tive. Without  obtrusion  of  himself, 
the  generous  personality  of  the  writer 
is  ever  present  to  the  reader  through- 
out his  books.  His  powers  of  observa- 
tion, of  the  finest  order,  are  always 
actively  displayed,  and  an  informing 
mind  is  constantly  at  work  in  giving 
to  the  minutest  facts  and  circumstances 
the  interest  of  method,  order  and  gen- 
ralization. 

The  personal  narrative  of  Humboldt 
is  carried  on  with  the  highest  gusto, 
every  paragraph  supplying  some  clear- 
ly defined  picture  of  nature  enlivened 
by  comparison,  or  the  reflections  of  the 
traveller  who  has  probably  never  been 
surpassed  in  this  field  of  literature. 
Thoroughly  furnished  by  his  previous 
studies  with  the  means  of  observation, 
his  perceptive  faculties  are  alive  tc 


ALEXANDEK  YON  HUMBOLDT. 


4T1 


every  incident  in  the  landscape,  the 
grand  or  the  minute ;  while  a  sympa- 
thy with  the  men  of  every  clime  in 
their  mora1  and  political  relations, 
gives  that  impress  to  their  regions  of 
abode,  which  can  be  derived  only  from 
a  human  interest.  His  observations 
of  the  island  of  Teneriffe,  with  his  ac- 
count of  an  ascent  of  its  celebrated 
Peak,  are  instinct  with  the  best  spirit 
of  philosophic  research,  as  the  sensitive 
traveller  walks  hand  in  hand  with 
nature.  It  is  by  this  union  of  the  par- 
ticular with  the  general,  that  Hum- 
boldt  secured  at  the  beginning,  and 
spite  of  the  increase  of  knowledge  on 
various  subjects  which  he  treated,  has 
since  maintained,  his  interest  as  a  trav- 
eller. Taking  this  single  object  alone, 
the  Peak  of  Teneriffe,  the  reader  may 
form  no  inadequate  idea  of  the  range 
of  his  attainments,  and  the  acuteness 
of  his  perceptions,  as  he  pursues  with 
him  the  geological  and  other  inquiries 
relating  to  vegetation  and  other  phe- 
nomena brought  into  view,  with  the 
speculations  arising  from  them  on  a 
survey  of  the  region.  But  this  feeling 
of  admiration  will  be  much  enhanced 
with  the  continuance  of  the  journey, 
in  the  examination  of  the  wonders  of 
a  country  where  a  thousand  additional 
objects  are  added  to  the  prospect. 

The  voyage  from  the  Canary  Islands 
to  the  northern  coast  of  South  America 
was  rapidly  made  by  the  "Pizarro." 
Twenty  days  brought  the  voyagers  on 
their  path  of  beauty  through  the  gen- 
tle equatorial  region  to  their  destined 
haven  of  Cumana.  On  the  way,  our 
travellers,  delighted  with  the  mildness 
of  the  climate,  were  carefully  observant 
of  winds  and  currents,  the  weeds  float- 


ing on  the  sea,  the  flying-fish  sporting 
in  the  air,  and  the  stars  of  another  sky 
above  them.  Humboldt,  indeed,  with 
an  ardent  love  of  astronomical  studies, 
never  neglects  the  heavenly  appear- 
ances in  his  landscape.  On  the  4th  of 
July,  he  particularly  records  that  he 
saw  for  the  first  time,  the  great  con- 
stellation of  the  Southern  Cross,  the 
appearance  and  associations  with 
which  he  describes  with  effect.  • 

When  Humboldt  and  his  friend  Bon- 
pland  reached  Cumana  on  the  16th  of 
July,  1799,  they  had  before  them,  in 
South  America,  literally  a  new  world 
for  scientific  observation  and  discovery, 
the  fertility  of  which,  in  its  natural 
phenomena,  has,  as  the  century  wears 
to  its  termination,  not  yet  been  exhaust- 
ed by  the  careful  student.  It  was 
then  a  virgin  soil.  As  the  arts  which 
Humboldt  brought,  with  their  appa- 
ratus and  processes,  were,  during  his 
whole  journeyings,  a  constant  wonder 
to  the  inhabitants ;  so  he  also  found  in- 
exhaustible opportunities  for  discovery 
in  their  employment.  The  day  on 
which  he  landed  among  these  marvels 
of  nature,  was  to  him  a  memorable 
one.  Henceforth,  for  five  years  the 
travellers  were  constantly  employed  in 
explorations,  of  the  western  continent, 
travelling  its  great  water  courses,  plains 
and  mountain  regions.  Commencing 
with  a  laborious  survey  of  the  country 
watered  by  the  Orinoco  and  its  tribu- 
tary streams,  in  which  they  were  seven- 
ty-five days  exposed  to  the  burning  sun 
of  the  equator  in  a  small  boat,  they 
passed  from  Venezuela  towards  the 
close  of  the  year  to  the  island  of  Cuba, 
where  several  months  were  spent  in 
the  study  of  its  soil,  climate,  mode  of 


472 


ALEXANDEE  VON  IIUMBOLDT. 


government  and  society,  and  its  pecu- 
liar institution  of  slavery.  Returning 
to  the  South  American  continent  in 
March,  they  sailed  up  the  Magdalena 
river,  in  New  Granada,  as  far  as  Honda, 
in  the  interior,  whence  they  proceeded 
on  mules  to  the  capital,  Santa  Fe  de 
Bogota.  After  they  had  completed 
their  observations  of  this  locality  and 
its  grand  natural  features  of  mountain 
scenery,  they  crossed  the  Andes  to  Po- 
payan  on  the  Pacific,  and  thence  ex- 
tended their  journey  to  Quito,  where 
they  arrived  early  in  January,  1802. 
Lima,  in  Peru,  was  then  visited,  the  va- 
rious journeyings  in  these  regions  in- 
volving the  crossing  of  the  chain  of 
the  Andes  five  times,  under  circum- 
stances of  various  hardship  and  ad- 
venture. From  Callao,  at  the  begin- 
ning of  1803,  they  sailed  in  a  Spanish 
frigate,  by  way  of  Guayaquil,  for  Aca- 
pulco,  on  the  Mexican  coast,  where  they 
landed  in  March.  About  a  year  was 
given  to  experiments  and  observations 
in  the  various  districts  of  Mexico,  par- 
ticularly in  relation  to  its  mineral  re- 
sources, including  a  residence  at  the 
capital,  when  the  travellers  sailed  from 
Vera  Cruz  for  the  United  States,  ar- 
riving at  Philadelphia  in  April,  1804. 
At  "Washington,  Humboldt  made  the 
acquaintance  of  Jefferson,  and  during 
his  two  months'  stay  in  the  country, 
was  diligently  employed  in  the  study 
of  its  political  and  social  conditions. 
In  the  month  of  August,  he  landed  in 
Europe  at  Bordeaux. 

He  had  now  to  methodize  and  ar- 
range the  vast  accumulation  of  obser- 
vations on  well-nigh  every  department 
of  scientific  investigation  which  he  had 
made  in  the  New  World,  including  ge- 


ography, geology,  climatology,  meteor 
ology,  botany,  zoology,  as  well  as  his 
deductions  and  speculations  relating  to 
the  inhabitants  of  the  country  he  had 
visited  in  archaeology,  ethnology  and 
their  existing  forms  of  civilization. 
This  work  was  mainly  performed  at 
Paris,  where  Humboldt  was  engaged 
in  its  prosecution,  more  or  less,  for  the 
next  twenty  years,  encouraged  and  as- 
sisted at  the  beginning  by  the  most 
eminent  and  scientific  men  of  France, 
as  Cuvier,  Gay-Lussac,  Arago  and 
others.  The  following  is  an  enumera- 
tion of  his  successive  publications, 
growing  out  of  his  travels,  given  in 
the  "  English  Cyclopaedia."  Under  the 
general  title  of  "  Travels  of  Humboldt 
and  Bonpland  in  the  Interior  of  Amer- 
ica in  the  years  1799-1804,"  a  succes- 
sion of  six  or  seven  works  of  large  di- 
mensions, with  illustrative  plates  and 
atlases,  was  issued  between  1807  and 
1817,  each  work  being  devoted  to  ob- 
servations in  a  particular  department ; 
and  even  then,  leaving  the  total  mass 
of  results  unexhausted.  The  first  part 
of  the  general  work  published  in  1807, 
was  by  Humboldt  himself,  and  was 
on  the  geography  and  distribution  of 
plants  in  the  equinoctial  regions ;  the 
second,  by  Humboldt  and  Bonpland 
jointly,  was  on  the  zoology  and  com- 
parative anatomy  of  the  expedition; 
the  third,  by  Humboldt,  was  a  politi- 
cal essay  on  the  Kingdom  of  New 
Spain,  in  two  quarto  volumes;  the 
fourth,  edited  by  Oltmanns,  contained 
a  digest  of  observations  in  astronomy 
and  magnetism ;  and  the  fifth,  forming 
a  huge  work  by  itself,  was  specially 
botanical,  and  was  entitled  "  Equinoc- 
tial Plants  gathered  from  Mexico,  ic 


ALEXANDER 


HUMBOLDT. 


473 


the  island  of  Cuba,  in  the  provinces 
of  Caraccas,  Cumana  and  Barcelona; 
from  the  Andes  of  New  Granada- 
Quito  and  Peru,  and  on  the  borders 
of  the  Rio  Negro,  Orinoco  and  the 
Amazon  rivers."  All  these  instal- 
ments of  the  main  work  appeared 
originally  in  Paris;  where  also  ap- 
peared, in  six  volumes  folio  (1815- 
1818),  a  separate  work  in  Latin  by 
C.  S.  Kunth,  "  On  the  new  Genera  and 
Orders  of  Plants  collected  in  their  Ex- 
ploration of  the  New  World,  by  Aime" 
Bonpland  and  Alexander  von  Hum- 
boldt,  and  by  them  described  and 
partly  sketched."  Works  also  ap- 
peared in  Germany  and  England,  giv- 
ing, in  a  more  popular  form,  the  results 
of  the  great  American  Exploration ;  the 
most  notable  of  which  in  England 
wers  "Researches  concerning  the  In- 
habitants of  America,  with  descriptions 
and  views  of  Scenes  in  the  Cordil- 
leras," and  "  Personal  Narrative  of 
Travels  in  the  Equinoctial  Regions  of 
the  New  Continent  during  the  years 
1799-1804,  by  Alexander  Von  Hum- 
boldt  and  Aime  Bonpland,"  both 
translated  and  edited  by  Helen  Maria 
Williams.  It  was  not  till  about  the 
year  1817  (if  we  except  an  "Inquiry 
concerning  Electrical  Fishes,"  pub- 
lished in  Erfurt  in  1806),  that  Hum- 
boldt  had  leisure  for  works  not  imme- 
diately growing  out  of  his  American 
travels.  In  that  year  he  published  a 
general  essay  entitled  "Prolegomena 
concerning  the  geographical  distribu- 
tion of  Plants  according  to  the  tem- 
perature of  the  atmosphere  and  the 
height  of  mountains." 

The  style  in  which  Humboldt's  Am- 
erican works  were  issued,  and  the  luxu- 
60 


ry  of  the  printing  and  illustrations,  may 
be  estimated  from  the  account  of  their 
cost,  given  by  Klencke.  In  1844,  in 
which  this  gigantic  work  was  still  in- 
complete, the  cost  of  a  copy  of  the 
folio  edition  was  twenty-seven  hun- 
dred dollars.  This  is  twice  the  cost 
of  the  celebrated  French  national 
work,  "  Description  de  1'Egypte,' 
toward  the  preparation  of  which  the 
government  of  that  country  advanced 
about  one-eighth  of  a  million  of  pounds 
sterling.  A  simple  calculation  will 
show  how  great  must  have  been  the 
expense  of  the  whole  work;  but  it 
will  become  more  evident  when  we 
state  that  the  printing,  paper  and  cop. 
per-plates  alone,  have  cost  more  than 
226,000  dollars. 

In  addition  to  the  books  thus  enu- 
merated, which  were  for  the  most  part 
in  the  French  language,  Humboldt  was 
the  author  of  another  work  written  in 
his  native  German,  drawn  from  his 
American  experiences  "  in  the  presence 
of  the  noblest  objects  of  nature,  on 
the  ocean,  in  the  forests  of  the  Orinoco, 
in  the  savannahs  of  Venezuela,  and  in 
the  solitudes  of  the  Peruvian  and 
Mexican  mountains."  It  is  impor- 
tant also  as  the  germ  out  of  which 
many  years  after,  sprang  his  compre- 
hensive "  Cosmos. "  This  was  his 
"  Views  of  Nature ;  or,  Contempla- 
tions on  the  Sublime  Phenomena  of 
Creation ;  with  Scientific  Illustrations," 
as  the  title  is  given  in  the  translation 
published  in  English,  in  1850,  by 
Messrs.  Otte  and  Bohn.  The  original 
work  was  written,  or  at  least  com 
menced,  in  Berlin,  in  1807,  when  he 
passed  a  year  or  so  in  that  city,  taken 
out  of  his  long  Parisian  residence 


474 


ALEXANDER  VON  HUMBOLDT. 


and  was  published  in  1808  when  he 
had  returned  to  the  French  capital. 

Alexander  von  Humboldt,  on  his 
return  from  America  to  Europe,  found 
his  brother,  who  had  earned  a  high  re- 
putation by  his  critical  abilities,  occu- 
pying the  post  of  resident  Minister  at 
the  court  of  Rome.  Thither  Alexan- 
der proceeded  in  the  Spring  of  1805, 
and  passed  some  time  with  William, 
whom  he  found  surrounded  by  the 
best  society  in  the  capital,  Madame  De 
Stael,  A.  W.  Schlegel,  Sismondi,  and 
others.  In  the  summer  he  proceeded, 
with  his  friends  Von  Buch  and  Gay 
Lussac,  who  had  come  to  Italy  for  the 
purpose,  to  visit  Mount  Vesuvius,  which 
was  then  in  a  state  of  eruption.  Re- 
turning to  Germany,  he  left  William 
at  Rome  as  ambassador,  where  the  lat- 
ter received  the  "Views  of  Nature," 
which  was  dedicated  to  him.  After 
this,  William  was  employed  at  Berlin 
in  the  home  ministry,  and  subsequent- 
ly in  various  diplomatic  situations 
abroad,  at  Vienna,  where  he  was  visited 
by  Alexander,  and  elsewhere.  In  1818 
he  was  Prussian  Ambassador  in  Lon- 
don, where  he  was  again  visited  by 
Alexander.  When  the  latter  left 
France  to  reside  for  a  time  in  Berlin, 
in  1818,  the  brothers  were  together  in 
that  city ;  but  Paris,  with  its  scientific 
opportunities,  and  the  necessities  of  his 
great  publication,  again  withdrew  Alex- 
ander to  that  city,  and  it  was  not  till 
1827  that,  at  the  express  desire  of  the 
King  of  Prussia,  he  established  him- 
self in  Berlin.  Henceforth  it  was  his 
home,  and,  with  the  exception  of  his 
journey  to  Central  Asia,  he  was  never 
long  away  from  it. 

This  scientific  expedition,  for  which 


he  was  long  preparing,  had  been  great 
ly  favored  by  the  King  of  Prussia,  and 
was  finally  entered  upon  at  the  express 
request  of  the  Emperor  of  Russia, 
through  whose  countries  it  was  to  pass. 
After  some  delays  it  was  commenced 
in  the  Spring  of  1829.  The  Emperor 
undertook  the  expense  of  the  whole ; 
and  to  give  dignity  to  the  position  of 
Humboldt,  the  King  of  Prussia,  before 
his  departure,  conferred  upon  him  the 
official  position  of  acting  privy  coun- 
cillor, with  the  -title  of  "  Excellency." 
He  was  accompanied  to  Russia  by  two 
naturalists,  his  associates  at  Berlin, 
Rose  and  Ehrenberg,  who  went  with 
him  as  scientific  partners  in  the  ex- 
pedition. In  the  distribution  of  their 
several  labors,  the  observations  on  mag 
netism,  the  results  of  geographical  as- 
tronomy, and  the  general  preparation 
of  the  geognostic  and  physical  plan  of 
North-western  Asia,  were  undertaken 
by  Humboldt ;  the  chemical  analysis 
of  mineralogy  and  the  keeping  of  the 
travelling  diary  fell  to  Rose ;  and  the 
botanical  and  zoological  departments 
were  assigned  to  Ehrenberg.  Leaving 
Petersburg  towards  the  end  of  May 
the  party  proceeded  to  Moscow,  and 
thence  to  the  Wolga,  visiting  Kasan 
and  inspecting  the  ancient  Tartar  ruins 
of  Bulgar.  Resting  for  several  weeks 
at  Jekatharinenburg,  on  the  Asiatic 
side  of  the  Ural,  important  observa- 
tions were  made  of  the  formation  of 
that  mountain  chain  with  its  exten- 
sive mineral  resources.  The  journey 
was  thence  continued  to  Tobolsk,  and 
easterly  to  Tomsk  Barnaul,  and  the 
range  of  the  Altai  and  the  border  of 
China.  Returning  thence,  the  expedi- 
tion was  extended  to  the  Caspian  Sea, 


ALEXANDEK   YON   HUMBOLDT. 


475 


which  was  reached  in  the  middle  of 
October.  New  and  valuable  researches 
and  experiments  were  here  made,  after 
which  the  travelers,  traversing  the  ter- 
ritory of  the  Don  Cossacks,  returned 
by  way  of  Moscow  to  St.  Peters- 
burgh,  which  they  reached  in  the  mid- 
dle of  November,  and,  at  the  close  of  the 
year,  Humboldt  was  again  at  his  home 
in  Berlin,  having  in  the  course  of  eight 
months  and  a  half,  performed  a  journey 
of  twenty-five  hundred  miles.  As,  in 
the  case  of  his  American  explorations, 
it  was  some  time  before  the  results  of 
these  new  observations  could  be  given 
to  the  world.  Humboldt's  portion, 
entitled,  "  Fragments  of  Asiatic  Geol- 
ogy and  Climatology,"  appeared  in 
Paris,  in  two  volumes,  in  1831.  This 
was  afterwards  supplemented  by  his 
work  on  "  Central  Asia,"  its  mountains 
and  climates,  published  in  1843.  These 
works  are  purely  of  a  scientific  charac- 
ter. 

Of  Humboldt's  subsequent  works, 
the  chief,  in  addition  to  many  contri- 
butions to  scientific  journals,  are  his 
"  Critical  Examination  of  the  History 
of  the  Geography  of  the  New  World, 
and  of  the  Progress  of  Astrology  in  the 
Fifteenth  and  Sixteenth  Centuries," 
published  in  Paris  from  1836  to  1839, 
and,  the  crowning  labor  of  his  long 
life,  his  "  Cosmos  :  a  Sketch  of  a  Phys- 
ical Description  of  the  Universe,"  the 
first  volume  of  which  appeared  in  18457 
and  the  fifth  and  last  was  finished  on 
his  eighty-ninth  birth-day,  in  1858- 
The  work  generally  comprises  a  sketch 
of  all  that  is  at  present  known  of 
the  physical  phenomena  of  the  uni- 


verse ;  a  distinct  portion  of  it  treats  of 
the  incitements  to  the  study  of  nature, 
afforded  in  descriptive  poetry,  land- 
scape painting,  and  the  cultivation  of 
plants,  while  another  is  given  to  the 
consideration  of  the  different  epochs  in 
the  progress  of  discovery  and  of  the 
corresponding  stages  of  advance  in  hu- 
man civilization.  Separate  volumes 
are  also  given  to  astronomy  and  the 
phenomena  of  earthquakes,  etc.,  in  their 
varied  relations. 

In  his  later  years,  Humboldt  waa 
closely  attached  to  the  Court  at  Ber- 
lin, and  was  frequently  employed  in 
matters  of  State  and  Diplomacy.  But 
he  allowed  himself  few  indulgences 
on  the  score  of  age  or  station,  and 
never  abandoned  his  love  and  pursuit  of 
science.  The  details  of  his  systematic 
intellectual  employment  in  his  later 
years  are  something  marvellous. 

At  length,  on  the  6th  of  May,  1859, 
the  long  career  was  brought  to  an  end. 
Alexander  Von  Humboldt  expired  on 
that  day,  in  his  ninetieth  year,  ripe  in 
the  fullness  of  his  fame,  and  in  the  af- 
fections of  the  civilized  world.  Never 
has  a  man  of  science  been  more  greatly 
honored  at  his  death.  His  labors  had 
taken  the  world  in  their  embrace,  and 
wherever  a  star  shone,  or  a  tide  roiled, 
the  report  of  his  attainments  had  been 
carried.  The  great  nations  of  Europe 
vied  with  one  another  in  paying  respect 
to  his  memory;  and  the  New  World? 
which  he  had  explored,  and  which  had 
risen  in  his  lifetime,  so  greatly  in  the 
advantages  of  the  civilization  which  he 
had  cherished,  was  not  wanting  in  these 
honors. 


WALTER    SCOTT. 


WALTER  SCOTT  was  born' at 
Edinburgh  on  the  loth  of  Au- 
gust, 1771.*  "  My  birth,"  says  he,  "  was 
neither  distinguished  nor  sordid.  Ac- 
tording  to  the  prejudices  of  my  country, 
•t  was  esteemed  gentle,  as  I  was  connect- 
ed, though  remotely,  with  ancient  fam- 
ilies, both  by  my  father's  and  mother's 
side."  His  paternal  great-grandfather 
was  a  cadet  of  the  border  family  of 
Harden.  His  grandfather  became  a 
farmer  in  Roxburghshire,  and  married 
a  lady  who  was  a  relative  of  his  own ; 
and  his  father,  Walter  Scott,  was  a 
writer  to  the  signet  in  the  Scottish 
capital.  The  poet's  mother,  Anne 
Rutherford,  who  was  likewise  of  hon- 
orable descent,  was  the  daughter  of 
one  of  the  medical  professors  in  the 
University  of  Edinburgh.  Delicacy 
of  constitution,  accompanied  by  a 
lameness  which  proved  permanent,  ex- 
hibited itself  before  he  completed  his 
second  year,  and  caused  soon  after  his 
removal  to  the  country.  There,  at  his 
grandfather's  farm-house  of  Sandy- 
knowe,  situated  beneath  the  crags  of  a 
ruined  baronial  tower,  and  overlook- 
ing a  tract  of  many  miles  studded  with 

*  This  narrative  is  abridged  from  the  "  Ency- 
clopaedia Britannica." 


spots  famous  in  border-history,  the  poet 
passed  his  childhood  till  about  hia 
eighth  year,  with  scarcely  any  inter- 
ruption but  that  of  a  year  spent  at 
Bath.  Of  this  early  period  there 
are  related  several  interesting  anec- 
dotes of  his  sympathy  with  the  grand- 
eur and  beauty  of  nature.  The  tenaci- 
ty of  his  infantine  recollections  gave 
promise  of  what  was  afterwards  so  re- 
markable a  faculty  in  his  mind ;  and 
the  ballads  and  legends,  which  were 
recited  to  him  amidst  the  scenes  in 
which  their  events  were  laid,  co-op- 
erated in  after-days  with  family  and 
national  pride  to  decide  the  bent  of 
the  border-minstrel's  fancy. 

His  health  being  partially  confirm 
ed,  he  was  recalled  home;  and  froni 
the  end  of  1779  until  1783,  his  educa 
tion  was  conducted  in  the  High  School 
of  Edinburgh,  with  the  assistance  of  a 
tutor  resident  in  his  father's  house.  In 
the  years  immediately  preceding  this 
change,  he  had  shown  decided  activity 
of  intellect,  and  strong  symptoms  of  its 
diversion  towards  literary  pursuits  ; 
but  now,  introduced  with  imperfect 
preparation  into  a  large  and  thorough- 
ly trained  class,  and  thrown,  for  the 
first  time  in  his  life  among  a  crowd  of 

(476) 


f 

,  tfo  original  painting  ty  Sir  Thomas  Lawrence 


Johnson,  Wilson  !k  Co,  Publishers. 


478 


WALTER  SCOTT. 


I  would  willingly  have  gratified  by 
traveling  over  half  the  globe." 

In  November,  1783,  Scott  became  a 
student  in  the  University  of  Edin- 
burgh, in  which,  however,  he  seems  to 
have  attended  no  classes  but  those  of 
Greek,  Latin,  and  logic,  during  one 
session,  with  those  of  ethics  and  uni- 
versal history  at  a  later  period,  while 
preparing  for  the  bar.  About  this 
time,  he  also  acquired  French,  Italian, 
and  Spanish,  all  of  which  he  after- 
wards read  with  sufficient  ease;  and 
the  German  language  was  learned  a 
few  years  later.  It  was  some  time  be- 
tween his  twelfth  and  his  sixteenth 
year  that  his  stores  of  romantic  and 
poetical  reading  received  a  vast  in- 
crease, during  a  severe  illness  which 
long  confined  him  to  bed ;  and  one  of 
his  schoolfellows  has  given  an  interest 
ing  account  of  excursions  in  the  neigh- 
borhood of  the  city,  during  this  period^ 
when  the  two  youths  read  poems  and 
romances  of  knight-errantry,  and  exer- 
cised their  invention  in  composing  and 
relating  to  each  other  interminable  tales 
modeled  on  their  favorite  books.  The 
vocation  of  the  romance-writer  and  po- 
et of  chivalry  was  thus  already  fixed. 
His  health  likewise  became  permanent- 
ly robust.  The  sickly  boy  grew  up  into 
a  muse  ular  and  handsome  youth ;  and 
the  lameness  in  one  leg,  which  was  the 
sole  remnant  of  his  early  complaints, 
was  through  life  no  obstacle  to  his 
habits  of  active  bodily  exertion,  or  to 
his  love  for  out-of-door  sports  and 
exercise. 

The  next  step  in  his  life  did  not 
seem  directed  towards  the  goal  to 
which  all  his  favorite  studies  pointed. 
His  father,  a  formal,  though  high-spir- 


ited and  high-principled  man,  whose 
manners  are  accurately  described  in  his 
son's  novel  of  "  Redgauntlet,"  designed 
him  for  the  legal  profession ;  and,  a* 
though  he  always  looked  wishfully 
forward  to  his  son's  embracing  the 
highest  department  of  it,  considered  it 
advisable,  according  to  a  practice  not 
uncommon  in  Scotland,  that  he  should 
be  prepared  for  the  bar  by  an  educa- 
tion as  an  attorney.  Accordingly,  in 
May,  1786,  Scott,  then  nearly  fifteen 
years  old,  was  articled  for  five  years  as 
an  apprentice  to  his  father,  in  whose 
chambers  he  thenceforth  continued,  for 
the  greater  part  of  every  day,  to  dis- 
charge the  humble  duties  of  a  clerk) 
until,  about  the  year  1790,  he  had, 
with  his  father's  approbation,  finally 
resolved  on  coming  to  the  bar.  '  Of  the 
amount  of  the  young  poet's  profession- 
al industry  during  those  years  of  servi- 
tude we  possess  conflicting  representa- 
tions; but  many  circumstances  in  his 
habits,  many  peculiarities  in  the  knowl- 
edge he  exhibits  incidentally  in  his 
works,  and  perhaps  even  much  of  his 
resolute  literary  industry,  may  be  safe- 
ly referred  to  the  period  of  his  appren- 
ticeship, and  show  satisfactorily  that  at 
all  events  he  was  not  systematically 
negligent  of  his  duties-  Historical  and 
imaginative  reading,  however,  contin 
ued  to  be  prosecuted  with  undiminish 
ed  ardour ;  summer  excursions  into  the 
Highlands  introduced  him  to  the  scenes, 
and  to  more  than  one  of  the  characters, 
which  afterwards  figured  in  his  most 
successful  works;  while  in  the  law- 
classes  of  the  university,  as  well  as  in 
the  juvenile  debating  societies,  he 
formed,  or  renewed  from  his  school 
day?,  acquaintance  with  several  who 


WALTER  SOOTT. 


479 


became  in  manhood  his  cherished 
friends  and  his  literary  advisers.  In 
1791,  the  Speculative  Society  made 
him  acquainted  with  Mr.  Jeffrey.  His 
attempts  in  poetry  had  now  become 
more  ambitious;  for,  it  is  said,  about 
the  completion  of  his  fifteenth  year,  he 
had  composed  a  poem  in  four  books  on 
the  Conquest  of  Granada,  which,  how- 
ever, he  almost  immediately  burned, 
and  no  trace  of  it  has  been  preserved. 
During  some  years  after  this  time,  we 
hear  of  no  other  literary  composition 
than  essays  for  the  debating  societies. 

In  July,  1792,  being  almost  twenty- 
one  years  of  age,  he  was  called  to  the 
bar.  Immediately  after  his  first  cir- 
cuit, he  commenced  that  series  of 
"  raids,"  as  he  playfully  called  them,  or 
excursions  into  the  secluded  border  dis- 
tricts, which  in  a  few  years  enabled 
him  to  amass  the  materials  for  his  first 
considerable  work.  His  walks  on  the 
boards  of  the  Parliament  House,  the 
Westminster  Hall  of  Scotland,  if  they 
gained  him  for  a  time  few  professional 
fees,  speedily  procured  him  renown 
among  his  fellow-lawyers  as  a  story- 
teller of  high  excellence ;  his  father's 
connections  and  his  own  friendships 
opened  for  him  a  ready  admission  into 
the  best  society  of  the  city,  in  which 
his  cheerful  temper  and  his  rich  store 
of  anecdotes  made  him  universally  pop- 
ular ;  and  his  German  studies  produc- 
ed, in  1796,  his  earliest  poetical  efforts 
that  were  published,  namely,  the  trans- 
lations of  Burger's  ballads,  "Lenora 
and  the  Wild  Huntsman."  The  same 
year  witnessed  the  disappointment  of 
a  long  and  fondly-cherished  hope,  by 
the  marriage  of  a  young  lady,  whose 
image,  notwithstanding,  clung  to  his 


memory  through  life,  and  inspired  some 
of  the  tenderest  strains  of  his  poetry. 

In  the  summer  of  1797,  however,  on 
a  visit  to  the  watering-place  of  Gilslaud, 
in  Cumberland,  he  became  acquainted 
with  Charlotte  Margaret  Carpenter,  a 
young  lady  of  French  birth  and  par- 
entage, whose  mother,  the  widow  of  a 
royalist  of  Lyons,  had  escaped  to  Eng- 
land, and  there  died,  leaving  her  chil- 
dren to  the  guardianship  of  their  fath- 
er's friend,  the  Marquis  of  Downshire- 
A  mutual  attachment  ensued ;  and,  af- 
ter the  removal  of  prudential  doubts, 
which  had  arisen  among  the  connec- 
tions on  both  sides,  Scott  and  Miss 
Carpenter  were  married  at  Carlisle,  in 
December  of  the  same  year. 

The  German  ballads,  which,  though 
they  met  with  very  little  sale,  had  been 
justly  praised  by  a  few  competent  crit- 
ics, served  as  the  translator's  introduo 
to  the  then  celebrated  Matthew  Greg- 
ory Lewis,  who  enlisted  him  as  a  con- 
tributor to  his  poetical  "  Tales  of  Won- 
der ;"  and  one  cannot  now  but  smile  to 
hear  of  the  elation  with  which  the 
author  of  Waverley  at  that  time  cor.- 
templated  the  patronizing  kindness  ex- 
tended to  him  by  the  author  of  "  The 
Monk."  Early  in  1788  was  published 
Scott's  translation  of  Goethe's  "  Goetz 
von  Berlichingen,"'which,  through  Lew- 
is's assistance,  was  sold  to  a  London 
bookseller  for  twenty-five  guineas;  but 
though  favorably  criticised,  it  was  re- 
ceived by  the  public  as  coldly  as  the 
preceding  volume.  In  the  summer  of 
1799,  the  poet  wrote  those  ballads 
which  he  has  himself  called  his  first 
serious  attempts  in  verse ;  the  "  Glen> 
finlas,"  the  "  Eve  of  St.  John,"  and  the 
"  Grey  Brother  " 


480 


WALTER   SCOTT. 


After  Scott's  marriage,  several  of  his 
summers  were  spent  in  a  pretty  cot- 
tage at  Lasswade,  near  Edinburgh, 
where  he  formed,  besides  other  ac- 
quaintances, those  of  the  noble  houses 
of  Melville  and  Buccleuch.  The  influ- 
ence of  these  powerful  friends,  willingly 
exerted  for  one  whose  society  was  agree- 
able, whose  birth  connected  him,  though 
very  remotely,  with  the  latter  of  those 
titled  families,  and  who  in  politics  was 
decidedly  and  actively  devoted  to 
the  ruling  party,  procured  for  him,  in 
the  end  of  the  year,  1799,  his  appoint- 
ment as  sheriff-depute  of  Selkirkshire, 
an  office  which  imposed  very  little  du- 
ty, while  it  gave  him  a  permanent  sal- 
ary of  £300  per  annum.  His  father's 
death  had  recently  bestowed  on  him  a 
small  patrimony ;  his  wife  had  an  in- 
come which  was  considerable  enough 
to  aid  him  greatly;  his  practice  as  a 
lawyer  yielded,  though  not  much,  yet 
more  than  barristers  of  his  standing 
can  usually  boast  of;  and,  altogether, 
his  situation  in  life,  if  not  eminent,  was 
at  least  strikingly  favorable  when  com- 
pared with  that  which  has  fallen  to  the 
lot  of  most  literary  men.  Scott,  how- 
ever, now  twenty-eight  years  of  age, 
had  done  nothing  to  iound  a  reputa- 
tion for  him  as  a  man  of  letters;  and 
there  appeared  as  yet  to  be  but  little 
probability  that  he  should  attach  him- 
self to  literature  as  a  profession,  or 
consider  it  as  any  thing  more  than  a 
relaxation  for  those  leisure  hours  which 
were  left  unoccupied  by  business  and 
^he  enjoyments  of  polite  society. 

In  1800  and  1801,  those  hours  were 
employed  in  the  preparation  of  the 
Border  Minstrelsy,  the  fruit  of  his 
childish  recollections,  and  of  his  vouth- 


ful  rambles  and  studies.  The  first  two 
volumes  appeared  in  the  beginning  of 
the  next  year,  and  the  edition,  consist 
ing  of  eight  hundred  copies,  was  sold 
off  before  its  close.  This  work,  how- 
ever, the  earliest  of  his  which  can  be 
said  to  have  given  him  any  general 
fame,  yielded  him  about  eighty  pounds 
of  clear  profit ;  being  very  far  less  than 
he  must  have  expended  in  the  investi- 
gations out  of  which  it  sprang.  In 
1803,  it  was  completed  by  the  publi- 
cation of  the  third  volume.  "  One  of 
the  critics  of  that  day,"  remarks  Mr. 
Lockhart,  "  said  that  the  book  contain- 
ed '  the  elements  of  a  hundred  histori- 
cal romances;'  and  this  critic  was  a 
prophetic  one.  No  person  who  has 
not  gone  through  its  volumes  for  the 
express  purpose  of  comparing  their 
contents  with  his  great  original  works, 
can  have  formed  a  conception  of  the 
endless  variety  of  incidents  and  im- 
ages, now  expanded  and  emblazoned 
by  his  mature  art,  of  which  the  first 
hints  may  be  found  either  in  the  text  of 
those  primitive  ballads,  or  in  the  notes 
which  the  happy  rambles  of  his  youth 
had  gathered  together  for  their  illus- 
tration." 

But  before  the  publication  of  the 
"  Border  Minstrelsy,"  the  poet  had  be- 
gun to  attempt  a  higher  flight.  "In 
the  third  volume,"  says  he,  writing  to 
his  friend  George  Ellis,  in  1804,  "  I  in- 
tend  to  publish  a  long  poem  of  my 
own.  It  will  be  a  kind  of  a  romance 
of  border  chivalry,  in  a  light -horseman 
sort  of  stanza."  This  border  romance 
was  the  "  Lay  of  the  Last  Minstrel," 
which,  however,  soon  extended  in  plan 
and  dimensions,  and,  originating  as  a 
ballad  on  a  goblin  story,  became  at 


WALTEE  SCOTT. 


481 


.  length  a  long  and  varied  poem.  The 
first  draught  of  it,  in  its  present  shape, 
was  written  in  the  autumn  of  1802,  and 
the  whole  history  of  its  progress  has 
been  delightfully  told  by  the  author 
himself,  and  is  well  illustrated  by  his 
biographer. 

In  1803,  during  a  visit  to  London, 
Scott,  already  familiarly  acquainted 
with  Ellis,  Heber,  and  other  literary 
men,  and  now  possessing  high  reputa- 
tion himself  in  virtue  of  the  "  Minstrel- 
sy," was  introduced  to  several  of  the 
first  men  of  the  time ;  and,  thenceforth, 
bland  as  he  was  in  manner,  and  kind 
in  heart,  indefatigable  and  successful 
in  his  study  of  human  character,  and 
always  willing  to  receive  with  cordial- 
ity the  strangers  whom  his  waxing 
fame  brought  about  him,  it  is  not  sur- 
prising to  find,  that  not  to  know  per- 
sonally Walter  Scott,  argued  one's  self 
unknown.  The  toleration  and  kind- 
liness of  his  character  are  illustrated 
by  the  fact,  that,  firm  as  his  own  polit- 
ical opinions  were,  and  violently  as  ex- 
citement sometimes  led  him  to  express 
them,  not  only  did  he  always  continue 
on  friendly  terms  with  the  chief  men 
of  the  opposite  party  in  Edinburgh, 
but  several  of  them  were  his  intimate 
friends  and  associates ;  and  he  even 
was  for  some  years  an  occasional  con- 
tributor to  the  Edinburgh  Eeview. 

In  1804,  was  published  his  edition 
of  the  ancient  poem  of  Sir  "  Tristram," 
so  valuable  for  its  learned  dissertations, 
and  for  that  admirable  imitation  of  the 
antique  which  appears  as  a  continuation 
of  the  eai  ly  minstrel's  work. 

During  that  year  and  the  preceding, 
the  Lay  was  freely  communicated  to  all 
the  author's  friends,  Wordsworth  and 
61 


Jeffrey  among  the  rest ;  and,'  after  un- 
dergoing various  changes,  and  receiv- 
ing enthusiastic  approval  in  several 
quarters  from  which  commendation 
was  wont  to  issue  but  sparingly,  it 
was  at  length  published,  in  the  first 
Week  of  1805.  The  poet,  now  thirty- 
three  years  of  age,  took  his  place  at 
once  as  a  classic  in  English  literature. 
Its  circulation  immediately  became  im- 
mense, and  has  since  exceeded  that  of 
any  other  English  poem. 

But  exactly  at  this  culminating  point 
of  the  poet's  life,  we  must  turn  aside 
from  the  narrative  of  his  literary  tri- 
umphs, to  notice  a  step  of  another  kind, 
which  proved  the  most  important  he 
ever  took.  In  one  of  those  interesting 
communications  of  1830,  which  throw 
so  much  light  on  his  personal  history, 
he  has  told  us,  that  from  the  moment 
when  it  became  certain  that  literature 
was  to  form  the  principal  employment 
of  his  days,  he  determined  that  it  should 
at  least  not  constitute  a  necessary  source 
of  his  income.  Few  literary  men,  per- 
haps, have  not  nourished  a  wish  of  this 
sort ;  but  very  few  indeed  have  pos- 
sessed, like  Scott,  the  means  of  con- 
verting the  desire  into  an  effectual  res- 
olution. In  1805,  as  his  biographer 
tells  us,  he  was,  "  independently  of 
practice  at  the  bar  and  of  literary 
profits,  in  possession  of  a  fixed  reve- 
nue of  nearly,  if  not  quite,  £1,000  a 
year."  To  most  men  of  letters  this  in 
come  would  have  appeared  affluence; 
but  Scott  has  frankly  avowed  that  he 
did  not  think  it  such.  The  fame  of 
a  great  poet,  now  within  his  reach, 
if  not  already  grasped,  seemed  to  him 
a  little  thing,  compared  with  the  dig- 
nity of  a  well-descended  and  wealthy 


±82 


WALTER  SCOTT. 


Scottish  land-holder;  and,  while  neither 
he  nor  his  friends  could  yet  have  for- 
eseen the  immensity  of  those  resources 
which  his  genius  was  afterwards  to 
place  at  his  disposal  for  the  attain- 
ment of  his  favorite  wish,  two  plans 
occurred  and  were  executed,  which 
promised  to  conduct  him  far  at  least 
towards  the  goal. 

The  first  of  these  was  the  obtaining 
of  one  of  the  principal  clerkships  in 
the  Scottish  Court  of  Session,  offices 
of  high  respectability,  executed  at 
a  moderate  cost  of  time  and  trouble, 
and  remunerated  at  that  time  by  an 
income  of  about  £800  a  year,  which 
was  afterwards  increased  to  £1,300. 
This  object  was  attained  early  in  1800, 
through  his  ministerial  influence,  aid- 
ed by  the  consideration  paid  to  his  tal- 
ents ;  although,  owing  to  a  private  ar- 
rangement with  his  predecessor,  he  did 
not  receive  any  part  of  the  emoluments 
till  six  years  later. 

The  second  plan  was  of  a  different 
sort,  being  in  fact  a  commercial  specu- 
lation. James  Ballantyne,  a  school- 
fellow of  Scott,  a  man  possessing  a 
good  education,  and  considerable  liter- 
ary talent  of  a  practical  kind,  having 
become  the  editor  and  printer  of  a 
newspaper  in  Kelso,  had  been  em- 
ployed to  print  the  "  Minstrelsy,"  and 
acquired  a  great  reputation  by  the  el- 
egance with  which  that  work  was  pro- 
duced. Soon  afterwards,  in  pursuance 
of  Scott's  advice,  he  removed  to  Edin- 
burgh, where,  under  the  patronage  of 
the  poet  and  his  friends,  and  assisted 
by  his  own  character  and  skill,  his 
printing  business  accumulated  to  an 
extent  which  his  capital,  even  with  pe- 
cuniary aid  from  Scott,  proved  inade- 


quate to  sustain.  An  application  for 
a  new  loan  was  met  by  a  refusal,  ac- 
companied, however,  by  a  proposal, 
that  Scott  should  make  a  large  ad- 
vance, on  condition  of  being  admitted 
as  a  partner  in  the  firm,  to  the  amount 
of  a  third  share.  Accordingly,  in  May 
1805,  Walter  Scott  became  regularly 
a  partner  of  the  printing-house  of  James 
Ballantyne  and  Company,  though  the 
fact  remained  for  the  public,  and  for 
all  his  friends  but  one,  a  profound  se- 
cret. "The  forming  of  this  commer- 
cial connexion  was,"  says  his  son-in- 
law,  "  one  of  the  most  important  steps 
in  Scott's  life.  He  continued  bound 
by  it  during  twenty  years,  and  its  in- 
fluence on  his  literary  exertions  and 
his  worldly  fortunes  was  productive 
of  much  good  and  not  a  little  evil. 
Its  effects  were  in  truth  so  mixed  and 
balanced  during  the  vicissitudes  of  a 

<j 

long  and  vigorous  career,  that,  at  this 
moment,  I  doubt  whether  it  ought,  on 
the  whole,  to  be  considered  with  more 
of  satisfaction  or  of  regret." 

From  this  time  we  are  to  view  Scott 
as  incessantly  engaged  in  that  memor- 
able course  of  literary  industry,  whose 
toils  advancing  years  served  only  to 
augment,  and  from  which  neither  the 
duties  of  his  two  professional  offices  ot 
clerk  of  session  and  sheriff,  nor  the  in- 
creasing claims  made  on  him  by  socie- 
ty, were  ever  able  to  divert  him.  He 
now  stood  deservedly  high  in  the  fa- 
vor of  the  booksellers,  not  merely  as 
a  poet  and  man  of  genius,  but  as  one 
possessed  of  an  extraordinary  mass  of 
information,  and  of  such  habits  aa 
qualified  him  eminently  for  turning 
his  knowledge  to  account.  He  was 
therefore  soon  embarked  in  undertak 


WALTER  SCOTT. 


483 


ings,  not  indeed  altogether  inglorious, 
but  involving  an  amount  of  drudgery 
to  which,  perhaps,  no  man  of  equal 
original  genius  has  ever  condescended. 
The  earliest  of  these  was  his  edition  of 
"Dryden,"  which,  entered  upon  in  .1805, 
was  completed  and  published  in  1808. 

But  the  list  of  works  in  which  his 
poetical  genius  shone  forth  continued 
rapidly  to  increase  amidst  his  multi- 
plicity of  other  avocations.  From  the 
summer  of  1804  till  that  of  1812,  the 
spring  and  autumnal  vacations  of  the 
court  were  spent  by  him  and  his  fami- 
ly at  Ashestiel,  a  small  mansion  ro- 
mantically overhanging  the  Tweed 
some  miles  above  Melrose,  and  rented 
from  one  of  the  poet's  kinsmen.  In 
this  beautiful  retreat,  at  intervals  dur- 
ing twelve  months,  was  chiefly  com- 
posed the  magnificent  poem  of  "  Mar- 
mion,"  which  was  published  in  the 
begining  of  1808.  At  the  same  place, 
likewise,  in  1805,  were  composed  the 
opening  chapters  of  a  novel  which,  on 
the  disapproval  of  one  of  the  author's 
critical  friends,  was  thrown  aside  and 
not  resumed  for  years. 

Scott's  commercial  engagements  must 
now  again  be  adverted  to.  In  the  year 
1808  he  took  part,  perhaps  as  a  sugges- 
ter,  certainly  as  a  zealous  promoter,  of 
a  scheme  which  terminated  in  the  es- 
tablishment of  the  "Quarterly  Review  " 
in  London,  as  a  political  and  literary 
counterpoise  to  the  "Edinburgh  Re- 
view," the  advocate  of  Whig  opinions. 
But  the  poet  had  other  than  political 
grounds  for  embarking  in  this  opposi- 
tion. He  had  seriously  quarrelled 
with  the  firm  of  Constable  and  Com- 
pany, the  publishers  of  the  "  Edinburgh 
Review,"  and  of  several  of  his  own  ear- 


lier works  ;  and  his  wish  to  check  the 
enterprising  head  of  that  house  in  his 
attempts  to  obtain  a  monopoly  of  Scot- 
tish literature,  is  openly  avowed,  in 
Scott's  correspondence  at  the  time,  as 
one  of  his  principal  motives  for  fram- 
ing another  scheme.  His  plan,  as  far 
as  it  was  explained,  either  to  the  pub- 
lic or  to  his  own  friends,  amounted 
only  to  this  :  That  a  new  publishing 
house  should  be  set  up  in  Edinburgh, 
under  the  management  of  John  Ballan- 
tyne,  a  younger  brother  of  James ;  and 
that  this  firm,  with  the  acknowledged 
patronage  of  Scott  and  his  friends, 
should  engage  in  a  series  of  extensive 
literary  undertakings,  including,  with 
others,  the  annual  publication  of  a  His- 
torical and  Literary  Register,  conducted 
on  Tory  principles.  But  unfortunate- 
ly both  for  Scott's  peace  of  mind,  and 
ultimately  also  for  his  worldly  for- 
tunes, there  was  here,  as  in  his  pre- 
viously-formed connection  with  the 
same  family,  an  undivulged  secret. 
The  profits  of  the  printing-house  had 
been  large ;  Scott's  territorial  ambition 
had  been  growing  faster  than  his  pros- 
pect of  being  able  to  feed  it ;  and  these 
causes,  inextricably  mixed  up  with 
pique  towards  Constable,  and  kindli- 
ness for  his  Kelso  proteges,  led  him 
into  an  entanglement  which  at  length 
ruined  both  himself  and  his  associates. 
By  the  contract  of  the  publishing-house 
of  John  Ballantyne  and  Company,  ex- 
ecuted in  May  1808,  Scott  became  a 
secret  partner  to  the  extent  of  one 
third.  The  unhappy  issue  of  this  af- 
fair will  force  itself  on  our  notice  at  a 
later  stage. 

In  the  meantime  we  see  him  prose 
cuting  for  some  time  his  career  of  po 


134 


WALTEE  SCOTT. 


etical  success.  The  "Lady  of  the 
Lake,"  published  in  1810,  was  follow- 
ed by  the  "  Vision  of  Don  Roderick  " 
in  1811;  by  "Rokeby"  in  1812;  and 
by  the  "  Bridal  of  Trierinam,"  which 
came  out  anonymously  in  1813.  His 
poems  may  be  said  to  have  closed  in 
1815  with  the  "  Lord  of  the  Isles  "  and 
the  "  Field  of  Waterloo ;"  since  "  Har- 
old the  Dauntless,"  in  1817,  appeared 
without  the  writer's  name,  and  the 
dramatic  poems  of  1822  and  1830  are 
quite  unworthy  of  him.  In  the  midst 
of  these  poetical  employments  he  made 
his  second  and  last  appearance  as  an 
editor  and  commentator  of  English 
classics,  by  publishing  in  1814  his  edi- 
tion of  Swift. 

But  from  1815  till  1825,  Scott's 
name  ceased  almost  entirely  to  be  be- 
fore the  public  as  an  avowed  author  ; 
and  for  those  who  chose  to  believe  that 
he  was  not  the  writer  of  the  Waverley 
Novels,  it  must  have  been  a  question 
not  a  little  puzzling,  if  it  ever  occurred 
to  them,  how  this  man,  who  wrote  with 
such  ease,  and  seemed  to  take  such 
pleasure  in  writing,  was  now  occupy- 
ing his  hours  of  leisure.  A  few  arti- 
cles in  the  "  Quarterly  Review,"  such 
works  as  "  Paul's  Letters,"  and  anno- 
tations in  occasional  editions  of  ancient 
tracts,  accounted  but  poorly  for  his 
time  during  ten  years. 

About  1813  and  1814  his  popularity 
as  a  poet  was  sensibly  on  the  decline, 
partly  from  causes  inherent  in  his  later 
poems  themselves,  and  partly  from  ex- 
traneous causes,  among  which  a  prom- 
inent place  belongs  to  the  appearance 
of  Byron.  No  man  was  more  quick- 
sighted  than  Scott  in  perceiving  the 
ebb  of  popular  favor ;  and  no  man 


better  prepared  to  meet  the  reverse 
with  firmness.  He  put  in  serious  exe- 
cution a  threat  which  he  had  playf ullj 
uttered  to  one  of  his  own  family  even 
before  the  publication  of  the  "  Lady  of 
the  Lake."  "  If  I  fail  now,"  said  he. 
"  I  will  write  prose  for  life."  And  in 
writing  prose  his  genius  discovered, 
on  its  first  attempt,  a  field  in  which  it 
earned  triumphs  even  more  splendid 
than  its  early  ones  in  the  domain  of 
poetry. 

The  chapters  of  fiction  begun  at 
Ashestiel  in  1805,  which  had  already 
been  resumed  and  again  thrown  aside, 
were  once  more  taken  up,  and  the 
work  was  finished  with  miraculous 
rapidity;  the  second  and  third  vol- 
umes having  been  written  during 

Q  .  o 

the  afternoons  of  three  summer 
weeks  in  1814.  The  novel  appear 
ed  in  July  of  that  year,  under  the 
title  of  "Waverley,"  and  its  success 
from  the  first  was  unequivocal  and  un- 
paralleled. Although  we  cannot  here 
give  a  catalogue  of  Scott's  works,  yet 
in  truth  such  a  list  of  the  novels  and 
romances  does  in  itself  present  the 
most  surprising  proof,  both  of  his  pa- 
tient industry,  and  of  the  singularly 
equable  command  which  he  had  at  all 
times  over  his  mental  resources.  In 
the  midst  of  occupations  which  would 
have  taken  away  all  leisure  from  other 
men,  the  press  poured  forth  volume  af- 
ter volume,  in  succession  so  rapid  as  to 
deprive  of  some  part  of  its  absurdity  one 
of  the  absurd  suppositions  of  the  day, 
namely,  that  more  persons  than  one 
were  concerned  in  the  novels.  "  Guy 
Mannering,"  the  second  of  the  series, 
in  1815,  was  followed  in  1816  by  the 
"  Antiquary  "  and  the  "  First  Series  of 


WALTER   SCOTT. 


485 


the  Tales  of  My  Landlord."  "  Eob 
Roy"  appeared  in  1817;  the  "Second 
Series  of  the  Tales"  in  1818,  and  in 
1819  the  "Third  Series"  and  "Ivan- 
hoe."  Two  romances  a-year  now  seem- 
ed to  be  expected  as  the  due  of  the 
public.  The  year  1820  gave  them  the 
"Monastery"  and  the  "Abbot;"  1821, 
"Kenilworth"  and  the  "Pirate;"  the 
"  Fortunes  of  Nigel,  coming  out  alone 
in  1822,  was  followed  in  1823  by  no 
fewer  than  three  works  of  fiction, 
"Peveril  of  the  Peak,"  "Quentin  Dur- 
ward,"  and  "St.  Ronan's  Well;"  and 
the  comparatively  -scanty  number  of 
novels  in  1824  and  1825,  which  pro- 
duced respectively  only  "  Redgauntlet " 
and  the  "Tales  of  the  Crusaders,"  is 
accounted  for  by  the  fact  that  the 
author  was  engaged  in  preparing  a 
large  historical  work. 

It  is  impossible  even  to  touch  on  the 
many  interesting  details  which  Scott's 
personal  history  presents  during  these 
brilliant  years ;  but  it  is  indispensable 
to  say,  that  his  dream  of  territorial  ac- 
quisition was  realized  with  a  splendor 
which,  a  few  years  before,  he  himself 
could  not  have  hoped  for.  The  first 
step  was  taken  in  1811,  by  the  pur- 
chase of  a  small  farm  of  a  hundred 
acres  on  the  banks  of  the  Tweed,  which 
received  the  name  of  Abbotsford ;  and 
in  a  few  years  grew,  by  new  purchases, 
into  a  large  estate.  The  modest  dwell- 
ing first  planned  on  this  little  manor, 
with  its  two  spare  bed-rooms  and  its 
plain  appurtenances,  expanded  itself 
in  like  manner  with  its  master's  wax- 
ing means  of  expenditure,  till  it  had 
become  that  baronial  castle  which  we 
now  reverentially  visit  as  the  minstrel's 
home.  The  hospitality  of  the  poet  in- 


creased with  his  seeming  prosperity ; 
his  mornings  were  dedicated  to  compo- 
sition, and  his  evenings  to  society  ;  and 
from  the  date  of  his  baronetcy  in  1820 
to  the  final  catastrophe  in  1826,  no 
mansion  in  Europe,  of  poet  or  of  noble- 
man, could  boast  such  a  succession 
of  guests  illustrious  for  rank  or  talent, 
as  those  who  sat  at  Sir  Walter  Scott's 
board,  and  departed  proud  of  having 
been  so  honored.  His  family  mean- 
while grew  up  around  him ;  his  eldest 
son  and  daughter  married ;  most  of  his 
early  friends  continued  to  stand  by  his 
side;  and  few  that  saw  the  poet  in 
1825,  a  hale  and  seemingly  happy  man 
of  fifty-four,  could  have  guessed  that 
there  remained  for  him  only  a  few 
more  years  (years  of  mortification  and 
of  sorrow),  before  he  should  sink  into 
the  grave,  struck  down  by  internal  ca 
lamity,  not  by  the  gentle  hand  of  time. 
And  yet  not  only  was  this  the  issue, 
but,  even  in  the  hour  of  his  greatest 
seeming  prosperity,  Scott  had  again  and 
again  been  secretly  struggling  against 
some  of  the  most  alarming  anxieties. 
On  details  as  to  his  unfortunate  com- 
mercial engagements  we  cannot  here 
enter.  It  is  enough  to  say,  that  the 
printing  company  of  which  he  was  a 
partner,  which  seems  to  have  had  con- 
siderable liabilities  eve  before  the  es- 
tablishment of  the  publishing-house, 
was  now  inextricably  entangled  with 
the  concerns  of  the  latter,  many  of 
whose  largest  speculations  had  been 
completely  unsuccessful ;  that,  besides 
this,  both  firms  were  involved  to  an 
enormous  extent  with  the  house  of 
Constable ;  and  that  large  sums,  which 
had  been  drawn  by  Sir  Walter  Scott  as 
copyright-money  for  the  novels,  had 


486 


WALTER  SCOTT. 


been  paid  in  bills  which  were  still  cur- 
rent, and  threatening  to  come  back  on 
him. 

In  the  beginning  of  1826,  Constable's 
house  stopped  payment ;  and  the  fail, 
lire  of  the  firm  of  Ballantyne,  for  a  very 
large  sum,  followed  instantly  and  of 
course.  Probably  even  the  utter  ruin 
which  this  catastrophe  brought  upon 
Scott,  was  not  more  painful  to  him  than 
the  exposure  which  it  necessarily  involv- 
ed, of  those  secret  connections,  the  exist- 
ence of  which  even  his  most  confiden- 
tial friends  could  till  now  have  at  most 
only  suspected.  But  if  he  had  been 
imprudent,  he  was  both  courageous 
and  honorable ;  and  in  no  period  of  his 
life  does  he  appear  to  such  advantage, 
as  when  he  stood,  as  now,  beggared, 
humbled,  and  covered  with  a  load  of 
debt  from  which  no  human  exertions 
seemed  able  to  relieve  him.  He  came 
forward  without  a  day's  delay,  and  re- 
fused to  be  dealt  with  as  an  ordinary 
bankrupt,  or  to  avail  himself  of  those 
steps  which  would  have  set  him  free 
from  the  claims  of  his  creditors,  on  sur- 
rendering his  property  to  them.  He  in- 
sisted that  these  claims  should,  so  far 
as  regarded  him,  be  still  allowed  to 
subsist ;  and  he  pledged  himself  that 
the  labour  of  his  future  life  should 
be  unremittingly  devoted  to  the  dis- 
charge of  them.  He  did  more  than 
fulfil  his  noble  promise ;  for  the  gigan- 
tic toil  to  which,  during  years  after 
this,  he  submitted,  was  the  immediate 
cause  that  shortened  his  life.  His  self- 
sacrifice,  however,  effected  astonishing- 
ly much  towards  the  purpose  which  it 
was  designed  to  serve.  Between  Janu- 
ary 1826  and  January  1828,  he  had 
realized  for  the  creditors  the  surprising 


sum  of  nearly  £40,000  ;  and  soon  after 
his  death  the  principal  of  the  whole 
vBallantyne  debt  was  paid  up  by  his 
executors. 

After  spending  at  Abbotsford,  in 
1826,  a  solitary  summer,  very  unlike 
its  former  scenes  of  splendor,  Scott,  re 
turning  to  town  for  his  winter  duties, 
and  compelled  to  leave  behind  him  his 
dying  wife  (who  survived  but  till  the 
spring),  took  up  his  residence  in  lodg- 
ings, and  there  continued  that  sys- 
tem of  incessant  and  redoubled  labor 
which  he  had  already  maintained  for 
months,  and  maintained  afterwards  till 
it  killed  him.  Woodstock,- published 
in  1826,  had  been  written  during  the 
crisis  of  his  distresses ;  and  the  next 
fruit  of  his  toil  wras  the  "  Life  of  Na- 
poleon," which,  commenced  before  the 
catastrophe,  appeared  in  1827,  and  was 
followed  by  the  "  First  Series  of  Chron- 
icles of  the  Canongate ;"  while  to  these 
again  succeeded,  in  the  end  of  the  same 
year,  the  "  First  Series  of  the  Tales  of 
a  Grandfather.  The  year  1828  produc- 
ed the  Second  Series  of  both  of  these 
works ;  1829  gave  "  Anne  of  Gierstein," 
the  first  volume  of  a  "  History  of  Scot- 
land "  for  "  Lardner's  Cyclopaedia,"  and 
the  "Third  Series  of  the  Tales  of  a 
Grandfather."  The  same  year  also 
witnessed  the  commencement  of  that 
annotated  publication  of  the  collected 
novels,  which,  together  with  the  simi- 
lar edition  of  poetical  works,  was  so 
powerful  an  instrument  in  effecting 
Scott's  purpose  of  pecuniary  disentan- 
glement. In  1830  came  two  Dramas, 
the  "Letters  on  Demonology,"  the 
"  Fourth  Series  of  the  Tales  of  a  Grand- 
father," and  the  second  volume  of  the 
"  History  of  Scotland."  If  we  are  dis 


WALTER  SCOTT. 


487 


.appointed  when  we  compare  most  of 
theso  works  with  the  productions  of 
younger  and  happier  days,  our  criti- 
cism will  be  disarmed  by  a  recollec- 
tion of  the  honorable  end  which  the 
later  works  promoted;  and  as  to  the 
last  productions  of  the  mighty  master, 
the  volumes  of  1831,  containing  "  Count 
Robert  "  and  "  Castle  Dangerous,"  no 
one  who  is  acquainted  with  the  melan- 
choly circumstances  under  which  these 
were  composed  and  published,  will  be 
capable  of  any  feeling  but  that  of  com- 
passionate respect. 

The  dejection  which  it  was  impossi- 
ble for  Scott  not  to  feel  in  commencing 
his  self-imposed  task,  was  materially 
lightened,  and  his  health  invigorated, 
by  an  excursion  to  London  and  Paris 
in  the  course  of  1826,  for  the  purpose 
of  collecting  materials  for  the  "  Life  of 
Napoleon."  In  1829,  alarming  symp- 
toms appeared,  and  were  followed  by 
a  paralytic  attack  in  February  1830, 
after  which  the  tokens  of  the  disease 
were  always  more  or  less  perceptible 
to  his  family ;  but  the  severity  of  his 
tasks  continued  unremitted,  although  in 
that  year  he  retired  from  his  clerkship, 
and  took  up  his  permanent  residence 
at  Abbotsfoid.  The  mind  was  now 
but  too  evidently  shaken,  as  well  as 
the  body;  and  the  diary  which  he 
kept  contains,  about  and  after  this 
time  melancholy  misgivings  cf  his 


own  upon  this  subject.  In  April  1831, 
he  had  the  most  severe  shock  of  his 
disease  that  had  yet  attacked  him ;  and 
having  been  at  length  persuaded  to 
abandon  literary  exertion,  he  left  Ab- 
botsford  in  September  of  that  year,  on 
his  way  to  the  Continent,  no  country  of 
which  he  had  ever  yet  visited,  except 
some  parts  of  France  and  Flanders. 
This  new  tour  was  undertaken  with  the 
faint  hope  that  abstinence  from  mental 
labor  might  for  a  time  avert  the  im- 
pending blow.  A  ship  of  war,  fur- 
nished for  the  purpose  by  the  Admir- 
alty, conveyed  Sir  Walter,  first  to 
Malta,  and  then  to  Naples;  and  the 
accounts  which  we  have,  both  of  the 
voyage  and  of  his  residence  in  Italy, 
abound  with  circumstances  of  melan- 
choly interest.  After  the  beginning 
of  May  1832,  his  mind  was  completely 
overthrown;  his  nervous  impatience 
forced  his  companions  to  Irirry  him 
homeward  from  Rome  through  the 
Tyrol  to  Frankfort ;  in  June  they  ar- 
rived in  London,  whence  Sir  Walter 
was  conveyed  by  sea  to  Edinburgh, 
and,  having  reached  Abbotsford  on 
the  llth  of  July,  he  there  continued 
to  exist,  with  a  few  intervals  of  con- 
sciousness, till  the  afternoon  of  the  21st 
of  September,  when  he  expired,  having 
just  completed  the  sixty-first  year  of 
his  age.  On  the  26th  he  was  buried  in 
the  beautiful  ruins  of  Dryburgh  Abbey 


DOROTHY    PAYNE    MADISON. 


rriHE  parents  of  Dorothy  Payne 
J-  Madison,  John  and  Mary  Payne, 
were  natives  of  and  residents  in  Vir- 
ginia ;  but  it  happened  that,  while  on 
a  visit  to  North  Carolina,  their  eldest 
daughter  was  born  May  20th,  1772,  and 
was  named  Dorothy,  after  a  near  rela- 
tive. Mr.  Payne  and  his  wife  were  strict 
members  of  the  Society  of  Friends,  or 
Quakers,  and  seem  to  have  been 
among  the  first  in  that  sect  who  had 
conscientious  scruples  as  to  their  right 
to  have  and  keep  slaves.  When  Doro- 
thy was  about  fourteen,  her  parents 
sold  their  plantation  in  Virginia,  and, 
having  removed  to  Philadelphia,  took 
their  slaves  with  them  and  set  them  all 
free.  Here  the  young  .girl  received 
the  advantages  of  such  education  and 
training  as  were  within  reach  at  that 
stormy  period  of  our  history,  and  were 
consistent  with  the  rather  narrow  and 
peculiar  views  of  the  denomination  to 
which  she  was  attached.  Dorothy  was 
*iertainly  not  indebted  to  wealth, 
rank,  or  fashionable  accomplishments 
for  the  high  estimate  which  was 
entertained  for  her  by  a  large  cir- 
cle of  friends  and  admirers.  She 
was,  however,  remarkably  beautiful, 


and  no  less  modest  and  gentle  thau 
distinguished  for  personal  attractive- 
ness. 

At  the  age  of  nineteen,  she  was  mar 
ried  to  John  Todd,  a  young  lawyer  of 
Philadelphia,  and  a  member  of  the  So- 
ciety of  Friends.  During  the  follow- 
ing two  years  she  lived  in  quiet  retire- 
ment, entirely  aloof  from  the  world  of 
society  and  fashion.  In  1793,  however, 
during  the  prevalence  of  the  yellow 
fever  in  Philadelphia,  Mr.  Todd  was 
carried  off  by  the  disease,  leaving  his 
wife  a  widow  with  two  little  children. 
After  the  first  severity  of  grief  had 
passed  away,  the  youthful  and  beauti- 
ful widow  began  to  be  drawn  more 
than  ever  before  into  what  may  be 
called  society.  Her  charming  grace  of 
manner,  her  frankness,  geniality,  and 
light-heartedness  brought,  not  only  nu- 
merous friends,  but  quite  a  host  of  ad- 
mirers to  her  side.  Many  of  these  tried 
to  win  the  heart  and  gain  the  hand 
of  the  lovely  Mrs.  Todd,  but  with- 
out success.  The  victory  was  re- 
served for  James  Madison,  then  a 
member  of  Congress  from  Virginia : 
and,  though  he  was  twenty  years 
her  senior,  yet  he  seems  to  have  in 


DOROTHY  PAYNE  MADISON. 


49] 


war  is  not  material  to  our  present  pur- 
poses. All  that  we  need  notice  here, 
in  connection  with  the  President's 
family,  is  that  Vandal-like  attack  upon 
Washington  by  the  British,  in  1814, 
utterly  purposeless  as  regarded  any 
effect  upon  the  war.  So  unlocked  for 
was  this  attack,  that  widespread  panic 
and  confusion  prevailed  in  the  capital 
and  its  vicinity.  Every  one  that  could, 
ran  away,  and  carried  with  them  all 
that  was  possible;  all  except  Mrs. 
Madison.  The  President  had  gone  to 
hold  a  council  of  war,  and  numerous 
friends  came  and  begged  his  wife  to 
leave  the  city  at  once ;  but  she  utterly 
refused  to  do  so,  in  his  absence ;  she 
was  resolved  to  wait  his  return  and 
have  his  company. 

We  give  here  an  extract  from  a  let- 
ter of  hers  at  this  juncture,  which  will 
enable  the  reader  to  form  a  more  vivid 
idea  of  the  actual  state  of  affairs  than 
we  could  possibly  set  forth  by  any 
elaborate  description : 

"  Tuesday,  August  23d,  1814. 

"  DEAR  SISTER  :  My  husband  left 
me  yesterday  to  join  General  Winder. 
He  enquired  anxiously  whether  I  had 
courage  or  firmness  to  remain  in  the 
President's  house  until  his  return  on 
the  morrow,  or  succeeding  day ;  and  on 
my  assurance  that  I  had  no  fear,  but 
for  him  and  the  success  of  our  army, 
he  left  me,  beseeching  me  to  take  care 
of  myself,  and  of  the  Cabinet  papers, 
public  and  private.  I  have  since  re- 
ceived two  despatches  from  him,  writ- 
ten with  a  pencil ;  the  last  is  alarming, 
because  he  desires  that  I  should  be 
ready,  at  a  moment's  warning,  to  enter 
my  carnage  and  leave  the  city ;  that 
the  enemy  seemed  stronger  than  had 


been  reported,  and  that  it  might  hap 
pen  that  they  would  reach  the  city, 

with  intention  to  destroy  it 

I  am  accordingly  ready ;  I  ha\  e  pressed 
as  many  cabinet  papers  into  trunks  as 
to  fill  our  carriage ;  our  private  proper- 
ty must  be  sacrificed,  as  it  is  impossi- 
ble to  procure  wagons  for  its  transpor- 
tation. I  am  determined  not  to  go 
myself  until  I  see  Mr.  Madison  safe, 
and  he  can  accompany  me,  as  I  hear  of 

much  hostility  towards  him 

Disaffection  stalks  around  us 

My  friends  and  acquaintances  are  all 
gone,  even  Col.  C.,  with  his  hundred 
men,  who  were  stationed  as  a  guard  in 

this   enclosure French   John 

(a  faithful  domestic),  with  his  usual 
activity  and  resolution,  offers  to  spike 
the  cannon  at  the  gate,  and  to  lay  a 
train  of  powder  which  would  blow  up 
the  British,  should  they  enter  the 
house.  To  the  last  proposition  I  pos- 
itively object,  without  being  able,  how- 
ever, to  make  him  understand  why  all 
advantages  in  war  may  not  be  taken. 

"  Wednesday  morning,  twelve  o'clock : 
Since  sunrise  I  have  been  turning  my 
spy -glass  in  every  direction,  and  watch- 
ing with  unwearied  anxiety,  hoping  to 
discern  the  approach  of  my  dear  hus- 
band and  his  friends ;  but,  alas,  I  can 
descry  only  groups  of  military  wander- 
ing in  all  directions,  as  if  there  was  a 
lack  of  arms,  or  of  spirit  to  fight  for 
their  own  fire-sides ! 

"  Three  o'clock : — Will  you  believe  it, 
my  sister?  we  have  had  a  battle  or 
skirmish  near  Bladensburgh,  and  I  am 
still  here  within  sound  of  the  cannon ! 
Mr.  Madison  comes  not ;  may  God  pro 
tect  him !  Two  messengers  covered  with 
dust  come  to  bid  me  fly ;  but  I  waii 


492 


DOROTHY  PAYNE  MADISON. 


for  him.    .....   At  this  late  hour, 

a  wagon  has  been  procured;  I  have 
had  it  filled  with  the  plate  and  most 
valuable  portable  articles  belonging  to 
the  house;  whether  it  will  reach  its 
destination,  the  Bank  of  Maryland,  or 
tall  into  the  hands  of  British  soldiery, 
events  must  determine. 

u  Our  kind  friend.  Mr.  Carroll,  has 
come  to  hasten  my  departure,  and  is  in 
a  very  bad  humor  with  me  because  I 
insist  on  waiting  until  the  large  picture 
of  General  Washington  is  secured,  and 
it  requires  to  be  unscrewed  from  the 
wall.  This  process  was  found  too  te- 
dious for  these  perilous  moments;  I 
have  ordered  the  frame  to  be  broken, 
and  the  canvass  taken  out.  It  is  done, 
and  the  precious  portrait  placed  in  the 
hands  of  two  gentlemen  of  New  York 
for  safe  keeping.  And  now,  dear  sis- 
ter, I  must  leave  this  house,  or  the  re- 
treating army  will  make  me  a  prisoner  in 
it,  by  filling  up  the  road  I  am  directed 
to  take.  When  I  shall  again  write  to 
you,  or  where  I  shall  be  to-morrow,  I 
cannot  tell." 

Happily,  this  second  war  with  Eng- 
land was  not  of  long  duration,  and 
Mrs.  Madison  did  the  honors  of  her 
house,  on  the  receipt  of  the  news  of 
peace,  in  1815,  with  unusual  brilliancy 
and  effectiveness.  Washington  Irving 
is  reported  as  characterizing  her,  at 
this  date,  "  as  a  fine,  portly,  buxom 
dame,  who  has  a  smile  and  pleasant 
word  for  every  body."  For  the  re- 
mainder of  Madison's  presidential  term, 
he  resided  in  a  private  house  where, 
however,  was  continued  to  be  dispens- 
ed the  liberal  hospitality  which  always 
marked  his  establishment. 

On  retiring  from  office,  in  18 IT,  and 


giving  the  reins  of  government  into  the 
hands  of  his  successor,  James  Monroe, 
Madison  left  Washington,  and  sought 
with  delight  his  mountain  home  at 
Montpelier.  He  was  now  well  advanc- 
ed in  age,  being  about  sixty-six  years 
old ;  and,  with  occasional  absences,  he 
spent  the  remainder  of  his  life  in  the 
quiet  enjoyments  of  home  and  family. 
Jefferson's  residence  at  Monticello  was 
within  a  day's  ride,  and  these  venera- 
ble men,  who  had  both  been  so  large- 
ly concerned  in  the  history  and  pro 
gress  of  affairs,  used  to  meet,  and  dis- 
course of  the  past  and  present,  and  give 
utterance  to  vaticinations  of  the  future. 
A  large  and  commodious  mansion,  built 
rather  for  comfort  than  display,  beau 
tiful  garden  and  grounds,  picturesque 
and  striking  scenery,  and  abundance 
of  means  wherewith  to  follow  the 
Apostolic  precept,  "  given  to  hospitali- 
ty," these  and  the  like  rendered  Mont- 
pelier extremely  attractive,  and  enabled 
Mrs.  Madison  to  play  the  part  of  the 
benignant  hostess  to  her  heart's  content. 
In  one  of  her  letters,  written  to  her 
sister,  in  July,  1820,  she  says  :  "  Yes- 
terday we  had  ninety  persons  to  dine 
with  us  at  our  table,  fixed  on  the  lawn 
under  a  large  arbor.  The  dinner  was 
profuse  and  handsome,  and  the  com- 
pany very  orderly.  Many  of  your  old 
acquaintances  were  here,  among  them 
the  two  Barbours.  We  had  no  ladies, 
except  mother  Madison,  Mrs.  Macon, 
and  Nelly  Willis.  The  day  was  cool, 
and  all  pleasant.  Half  a  dozen  only 
staid  all  night,  arid  are  now  about  to 
depart.  President  Monroe's  letter  this 
morning  announces  the  French  Minis- 
ter; we  expect  him  this  evening,  or 
perhaps  sooner,  though  he  may  no^ 


DOEOTHY  PAYNE  MAD1SOK 


493 


3ome  until  to-morrow;  but  I  am  less 
worried  liere  with  a  hundred  visitors 
than  with  twenty-five  in  Washington, 
this  summer  especially.  I  wish  you 
had  just  such  a  country  house  as  this, 
as  I  truly  believe  it  is  the  happiest  and 
most  independent  life,  and  would  be 
best  for  your  children." 

During  the  latter  years  of  his  life 
Mr.  Madison  was  a  confirmed  invalid, 
and  suffered  severely  and  continually 
from  debility  and  disease.  He  needed 
constant  attendance  and  watchful 
care  and  consideration.  It  was  in 
this  posture  of  affairs,  that  Mrs.  Madi- 
son displayed  the  depth  and  force  of 
those  estimable  qualities  which  belong- 
ed to  her.  Having  reached  to  a  point 
far  beyond  the  allotted  four  -  score 
years,  Madison  died,  Juue  28th,  1836, 
in  the  eighth-sixth  year  of  his  age,  and 
left  his  sorrowing  widow  to  pass  the 
remainder  of  her  pilgrimage  alone. 
Her  biographer  speaks  of  her  in  terms 
which  may  fitly  b£  quoted.  "  Much  as 
Mrs.  Madison  graced  her  public  station? 
she  was  not  less  admirable  in  domestic 
life.  Neighborly  and  companionable 
among  her  country  friends,  as  if  she 
had  never  lived  in  a  city ;  delighting 
in  the  society  of  the  young,  and  never 
better  pleased  than  when  promoting 
every  youthful  pleasure  by  her  partic- 
ipation, she  still  proved  herself  the 
affectionate  and  devoted  wife  during 
the  eighteen  years  of  suffering  health 
of  her  excellent  husband.  Without 
neglecting  the  duties  of  a  kind  host- 
ess, a  faithful  friend  and  relative,  she 
smoothed  and  enlivened,  occupied  and 
amused  the  languid  hours  of  his  long 
confinement." 


Mrs.  Madison's  own  health  broke 
down  for  a  season,  subsequent  to  her 
husband's  death,  and  after  a  brief  so- 
journ at  the  White  Sulphur  Springs  in 
Virginia,  she  concluded  to  take  up  her 
residence  in  Washington,  which  she  did 
in  the  autumn  of  1837.  Although  by 
no  means  a  recluse,  she  took  but  moder- 
ate share  in  society  and  its  gaieties.  She 
was,  however,  the  same  genial-hearted, 
amiable,  excellent  woman  that  she  al- 
ways had  been,  and  was  as  ready  as 
ever  to  administer,  to  the  extent  of  her 
means,  to  the  wants  and  necessities  of 
all  around  her.  Unhapily,  financial 
embarrassments  compelled  her  to  con 
sent  to  the  sale  of  Montpelier,  a  trial 
which  she  bore  with  sweet  submission, 
but  felt  none  the  less  keenly. 

The  latter  years  of  her  life  were 
marked  by  great  debility  of  her  bodily 
powers,  while  her  mental  faculties  were 
spared  to  her  in  their  full  vigor.  Mrs. 
Ellet  relates  that  she  took  great  de- 
light in  hearing  the  Bible  read,  and 
that  it  was  while  listening  to  a  portion 
of  St.  John's  Gospel  that  she  sunk  in- 
to that  peaceful  slumber  preceding 
final  dissolution.  Her  death  took  place 
July  8th,  1849,  in  the  seventy-eighth 
year  of  her  age.  Her  mortal  remains 
were  deposited  for  a  period  in  the 
Congressional  Cemetery  at  Washing- 
ton ;  but  in  January,  1858,  they  were 
removed  to  the  family  burial-ground 
at  Montpelier,  and  placed  by  the  side 
of  her  husband.  A  chaste  but  appro- 
priate monument  has  been  erected  to 
her  memory,  and  records,  as  far  as  the 
cold  marble  can,  her  many  virtues  and 
her  rightful  claim  to  be  held  in  esteem 
by  succeeding  generations. 


HENRY,    LORD    BROUGHAM. 


T^HE  family  of  Lord  Brougham  on 
the  paternal  side,  is  traceable,  in 
England,  through  an  ancient  ances- 
try; the  Broughams  having  been  set- 
tled in  Westmoreland  since  the  con- 
quest. When  towards  the  close  of  his 
life,  he  sat  down  to  write  Tiis  autobio- 
graphy, he  affected  to  make  light  of 
their  pretensions,  characterizing  their 
existence  in  general  as  "  a  state  of  re- 
spectable mediocrity,"  and  asserting 
that,  so  far  as  he  could  discover,  none 
of  these  long  line  of  predecessors  "  were 
ever  remarkable  for  anything,"  and  that 
even  in  the  warlike  adventures  upon 
which  they  had  been  forced  in  their 
troublous  times, — "  Even  in  that  career 
of  doubtful  usefulness,  they  were  ra- 
ther prudent  than  daring,"  of  which,  in 
a  humorous  way,  he  gives  some  in- 
stances. But  Brougham,  the  artificer 
of  his  own  fortunes,  could  afford  to  be 
contemptuous  of  his  ancestry.  He, 
however,  prided  himself  upon  his  ma- 
ternal descent,  attributing  much  of  his 
prosperity  to  the  Celtic  blood  which 
his  mother  brought  from  the  ancient 
Highland  clans  of  Struan  and  Kinloch- 
Moidart.  She  was  the  only  child  of 
the  sister  of  the  celebrated  Scottish 
historian,  Robertson.  Brougham's  fa- 

(494) 


ther,  who  had  been  educated  at  Eton 
had  travelled  on  the  continent,  and 
after  his  return  to  the  family  seat  in 
Westmoreland,  had  become  engaged 
to  his  cousin  Mary  Whelpdale,  the 
heiress  to  a  neighboring  estate,  from 
whom  he  was  suddenly  separated  by 
her  death,  which  occurred  the  very  day 
before  that  appointed  for  the  wedding. 
Subsequently  visiting  his  father's  very 
intimate  friend,  Lord  Buchan,  at  Edin- 
burgh, he  met  at  his  house  the  niece 
of  Dr.  Robertson,  Eleanor  Syme,  the 
daughter  of  the  Rev.  James  Syme,  one 
of  the  city  clergymen.  On  his  mar- 
riage to  this  lady,  the  couple  for  a  time 
resided  at  the  dwelling  of  Lord  Buchan 
in  St.  Andrew's  Square,  and  there,  their 
eldest  son,  Henry  Brougham,  was  born 
on  the  19th  of  September,  1778. 

From  some  "  Notes  about  Henry '' 
given  in  Lord  Brougham's  autobio- 
graphy, written  by  his  mother,  we 
learn  that  he  was  distinguished  for  his 
mental  activity  even  in  his  infancy. 
"From  a  very  tender  age,"  this  fond 
parent  writes,  long  after  her  son  had 
become  celebrated,  "he  excelled  .'ill 
his  contemporaries.  Nothing  to  him 
was  a  labor — no  task  prescribed  that 
was  not  performed  long  before  thr 


Likeness  from  the  last  Photograph  from  life- 
JohnsonWilson  &:  Co. .Publishers, Newark 


• 


HENRY,  LORD  BROUGHAM. 


495 


time  expected.  His  grandmother,  a 
.  very  clever  woman,  was  an  enthusias- 
tic admirer  of  all  intellectual  acquire- 
ments, and  used  to  compare  him  to  the 
Admirable  Crichton,  from  his  excelling 
in  everything  he  undertook.  From 
mere  infancy  he  showed  a  marked  at- 
tention to  everything  he  saw,  and  this 
before  he  could  speak ;  afterwards,  to 
everything  he  lieard /  and  he  had  a 
memory  the  most  retentive.  He  spoke 
distinctly  several  words  when  he  was 
eight  months  and  two  weeks  old ;  and 
this  aptitude  to  learn  continued  pro- 
gressive." To  the  mother  of  this  lady, 
his  grandmother,  says  Lord  Brougham, 
writing  in  the  fulness  of  his  fame,  "  I 
owe  all  my  success  in  life.  From  my 
earliest  infancy  till  I  left  college,  with 
the  exception  of  the  time  we  passed 
at  Brougham  with  my  tutor,  Mr. 
Mitchell,  I  was  her  companion.  Re- 
markable for  beauty,  but  far  more  for 
a  masculine  intellect  and  clear  under- 
standing, she  instilled  into  me  from 
my  cradle  the  strongest  desire  for  in- 
formation, and  the  first  principles  of 
that  persevering  energy  in  the  pursuit 
of  every  kind  of  knowledge,  which 
more  than  any  natural  talents  I  may 
possess,  has  enabled  me  to  stick  to,  and 
to  accomplish,  how  far  successfully  it 
is  not  for  me  to  say.  every  task  I  ever 
undertook." 

Having  been  taught  by  his  father 
to  read,  Henry  began  his  school  edu- 
cation, when  very  young,  at  a  sort  of 
infant  school  in  Edinburgh,  attended 
by  girls  as  well  as  boys ;  and  when  at 
the  age  of  seven  he  had  outgrown  this 
establishment,  he  was  sent  to  the  fa- 
mous High  School  of  the  city,  where 
he  was  at  first  taught  by  Luke  Fraser. 


Assisted  daily  in  his  studies  by  hia 
grandmother,  he  was,  on  one  occasion, 
by  the  aid  of  the  accomplished  lady 
enabled  to  vanquish  this  preceptor  OL 
a  disputed  bit  of  Latinity  for  which 
the  day  before  he  had  been  punished. 
The  master  admitted  the  error,  and  in 
justice  should  have  had  the  flogging — 
if  that  was  the  penalty — returned  on 
his  own  back.  Young  Harry,  how- 
ever, got  immense  credit  with  his 
schoolfellows  as  "the  boy  that  had 
licked  the  master,"  and  was  content 
with  this  purely  intellectual  triumph ; 
for,  in  telling  this  story  in  his  Me- 
moirs, he  adds  in  a  sufficiently  humble 
spirit :  "  I  am  bound  to  say  Mr.  Fraser 
bore  no  malice ;  and,  when  I  left  him, 
at  the  end  of  four  years,  to  go  into  the 
rector's  class,  we  parted  the  best  of 
friends."  Fraser  was  fortunate  in  his 
pupils,  having  the  good  luck  to  turn 
out,  from  three  successive  classes,  Wal- 
ter Scott,  Francis  Jeffrey  and  Henry 
Brougham.  The  rector  under  whose 
immediate  direction  the  last  came,  was 
the  amiable  Dr.  Alexander  Adam, 
whose  excellent  Latin  grammar  is  fa- 
miliar to  so  many  of  the  youths  of 
America.  The  first  of  the  two  re- 
maining years  of  the  school  course 
was  impaired,  so  far  at  least  as  pub- 
lic instruction  went,  to  young  Broug- 
ham by  his  ill  state  of  health,  which 
kept  him  at  home ;  but  the  time  was 
not  lost,  as  no  time  was  ever  lost  to 
this  indefatigable  writer.  Dr.  Adam 
had  one  of  the  best  gifts  of  a  teacher 
the  faculty  of  exciting  both  an  ardent 
love  of  the  subjects  he  taught,  and  a 
spirit  of  inquiry  into  all  that  related 
to  them.  "  Stirred  by  his  precepts 
and  example  (continues  Brougham,) 


490 


HENRY,  LORD  BROUGHAM. 


I  spent  the  months  during  which  I 
was  kept  Irom  school  by  indisposition, 
in  reading  and  trying  my  hand  at 
composition.  The  progress  I  made 
during  this  illness  clearly  proved  to 
me  two  things :  first,  the  importance 
of  allowing  boys  sufficient  time  for 
reading,  instead  of  devoting  the  whole 
day,  as  at  school,  to  Latin  and  Greek 
exercises;  next,  the  great  benefit  of 
having  a  teacher  who  could  dwell  up- 
on subjects  connected  with  the  lessons 
he  taught,  but  beyond  those  lessons, 
thus  exciting  the  desire  of  useful 
knowledge  in  his  pupils." 

Dr.  Adam,  indeed,  was  a  preceptor 
whom  his  pupils  delighted  to  honor. 
Walter  Scott,  who  had  also  passed  un- 
der his  instructions  from  those  of  Luke 
Fraser  several  years  before,  acknowl- 
edges himself  much  indebted  to  the  gen- 
tle directions  and  insinuating  scholar- 
ship of  the  worthy  rector.  Under  his 
encouragement  he  distinguished  him- 
self in  poetical  versions  from  Horace 
and  Virgil.  The  doctor  noticed  par- 
ticularly his  extraordinary  memory, 
which  he  often  appealed  to  for  the  de- 
tails of  battles  and  other  events,  call- 
ing him  the  historian  of  the  class.  "  It 
was  from  him,"  says  Scott,  "  that  I  first 
learned  the  value  of  the  knowledge  I 
had  hitherto  considered  only  as  a  bur- 
densome task."  Jeffrey  "  through  life," 
as  we  are  told  by  his  biographer,  "  re- 
collected him  with  the  same  judicious 
gratitude."  Brougham  was  fond  of 
expatiating  on  his  merits;  and  in  a 
passage  of  his  autobiography  has  nar- 
rated with  feeling  the  early  struggles 
of  this  scholar  with  poverty,  and  how 
he  overcame  them  by  his  zeal  for  study, 
and  inspired  his  pupils  with  his  pas- 


sionate love  of  knowledge  in  its  most 
liberal  forms,  as  "  with  great  natural . 
eloquence"  he  dwelt  upon  the  lessons 
of  history,  constantly  referring  to  in- 
dividuals, and  enriching  his  discourse 
by  classical  citations.  He  was,  too,  a 
great  deal  of  a  moralist,  inculcating  a 
love  of  independence;  and  in  times 
when  toryisrn  was  largely  the  fashion, 
was  quite  a  liberal.  His  pupil,  no 
doubt,  afterwards  profited  much  by 
his  prolonged  dissertations  on  the  an- 
cient orators,  whose  method  and  elo- 
quence the  rector  was  never  weary  of 
discussing.  Brougham  must  have  been 
a  good  student  at  the  High  School, 
though  he  objected  to  Lord  Cockburn 
and  others  fancying  that  he  at  all  dis- 
tinguished himself  there  ;  for  he  came 
out  with  title  of  dux — head  of  his 
class  and  the  school. 

"Having  finished  with  the  High 
School,"  says  he,  "I  passed  the  next 
fourteen  months,  from  August,  1791, 
to  October,  1792,  at  Brougham,  (the 
family  seat  in  Westmoreland,)  where 
Mr.  Mitchell  was  my  first  tutor — a 
man  of  excellent  temper  as  well  as 
sound  learning,  who  intended  to  take 
orders  in  the  Scotch  Church.  By  his 
conversation  on  every  subject  it  was 
impossible  not  to  profit ;  and  his  moral 
maxims  were  as  enlightened  as  his 
opinions  on  literary  and  scientific  sub- 
jects. The  time  was  principally  de- 
voted to  Greek  and  Latin ;  and  I  was 
further  instructed  in  such  duties  by 
my  father,  who  retained  his  love  of 
and  familiarity  with  the  classics ;  and, 
encouraged  by  him,  I  tried  my  hand 
at  writing  English  essays,  and  even 
tales  of  fiction."  Of  the  latter,  he  gives, 
in  the  autobiography,  with  a  rather  con 


HENTIY,  LOKD   BROUGHAM. 


499 


One  of  his  northern  excursions,  in 
the  summer  of  1799,  assumed  larger 
proportions  than  those  to  which  he 
had  been  hitherto  accustomed.  Join- 
ing a  yachting  expedition  fitted  out  by 
a  Mr.  Henry,  a  wealthy  Irish  gentle- 
man who  had  pursued  his  studies  in 
Scotland,  accompanied  by  his  friend 
Charles  Stuart,  Brougham  cruised 
about  the  Western  Islands  to  remote 
St.  Kilda,  with  the  intention,  on  the 
part  of  the  company,  of  prosecuting 
the  voyage  to  Iceland.  The  season,  at 
the  beginning  of  September,  however, 
proved  too  far  advanced  for  this,  and 
Brougham,  with  his  friend  Stuart,  sep- 
arating from  the  rest,  sailed  for  Copen- 
hagen instead.  The  tour,  continued  for 
three  months,  was  extended  through 
Denmark  and  Scandinavia.  Brough- 
am's observations  on  this  journey,  in 
the  form  of  a  journal  kept  at  the 
time,  supplies  one  of  the  largest  and 
most  interesting  chapters  of  his  Me- 
moirs. He  was,  of  course,  a  diligent 
traveller,  overlooking  little  of  interest 
on  his  way,  but  particularly  attentive 
to  scientific  and  political  matters,  not 
forgetting  the  social  and  economical 
habits  of  the  people  among  whom  he 
sojourned. 

His  University  course  having  been 
concluded,  and  the  law  chosen  for  his 
profession,  in  June,  1800,  he  "passed 
advocate"  at  Edinburgh,  a  technical 
Scottish  expression  equivalent  to  the 
English  being  "  called  to  the  bar." 
His  first  efforts  in  the  profession  in 
attending  the  Assizes  in  the  counties 
of  Berwick,  Roxburgh  and  Selkirk, 
were  not  very  productive,  being  con- 
fined to  the  defence  of  prisoners  who 
were  unable  to  pay  for  professional  as- 


sistance. He  had  at  this  time,  as  he 
tells  us,  "an  invincible  repugnance" 
to  the  calling,  and  was  anxious  to  find 
some  means  of  escape  for  it  in  "  diplo 
rnacy,"  meaning,  we  presume,  employ- 
ment under  government.  He  went  so 
far  as  to  seek  the  influence  in  this  di- 
rection of  Sir  Joseph  Banks,  then  in 
the  height  of  his  social  ascendancy, 
with,  whom  he  had  corresponded  on 
scientific  subjects.  Nothing  coming  of 
this,  he  continued  to  occupy  himself 
with  the  composition  of  an  elaborate 
treatise,  on  "The  Colonial  Policy  of 
the  European  Powers,"  the  main  ob 
ject  of  which  was  to  prove  the  advan- 
tageous effects  likely  to  result  to  the 
colonies  in  the  suppression  of  the 
slave-trade,  slavery  being  accepted  as 
a  settled  institution,  capable  of  ameli- 
oration when  the  foreign  traffic  should 
be  discontinued.  This  work  appeared 
at  Edinburgh,  in  two  volumes,  in  1803, 
and  attracted  much  attention  as  the 
work  of  so  young  a  man,  as  well  as  by 
its  indications  of  talent.  "  The  most 
careless  eye,"  says  one  of  the  author's 
critics,  "will  readily  discern  in  it  the 
germ  of  those  peculiarities  of  temper- 
ament, thought  and  style,  which  after- 
wards developed  themselves  into  such 
luxuriance.  Vigor  and  facility  of  ex- 
pression, bitter  sarcasm,  exaggerated 
statements,  and  singular  brilliancy  of 
illustrations  run  through  volumes  in- 
tended to  elucidate  and  enforce  a 
theory  of  colonial  policy  which  sub- 
sequent events  have  deprived  of  all 
interest  or  present  applicability."* 
Before  the  "  Colonial  Policy "  was 
issued,  its  author  had  appeared  as  a 

*  Art.  "Lord  Brougham."     "Chambers'  Pa- 
pers for  the  People,"  No.  88. 


500 


HENRY,  LORD  BROUGHAM. 


leading  contributor  and  contriver  of  a 
work,  new  in  its  scope  in  periodical 
literature,  with  which  his  labors  were 
Ions  to  be  identified.  The  "Edin- 

O 

burgh  Review."   the  first  number  of 

O  ' 

which  was  published  in  October,  1802, 
originally  suggested  by  Sydney  Smith, 
was  planned  in  a  little  coterie,  of  which 
Brougham  was  a  prominent  member. 
His  account  of  the  inception  of  the 
work  is  given  in  a  passage  of  the  Au- 
tobiography. "  I  can  never  forget  Buc- 
cleuch-place  (where  Jeffrey  resided); 
for  it  was  there,  one  stormy  night  in 
March,  1802,  that  Sydney  Smith  first 
announced  to  me  his  idea  of  establish- 
ing a  critical  periodical,  or  review  of 
works  of  literature  and  science.  I  be- 
lieve he  had  already  mentioned  this  to 
Jeffrey  and  Horner ;  but  on  that  night 
the  project  was  for  the  first  time  seri- 
ously discussed  by  Smith,  Jeffrey,  and 
me.  I  at  first  entered  warmly  into 
Smith's  scheme.  Jeffrey,  by  nature  al- 
ways rather  timid,  was  full  of  doubts 
and  fears.  It  required  all  Smith's 
overpowering  vivacity  to  argue  and 
laugh  Jeffrey  out  of  his  difficulties. 
There  would,  he  said,  be  no  lack  of 
contributors.  There  was  himself,  ready 
to  write  any  number  of  articles  and  to 
edit  the  whole ;  there  was  Jeffrey, 
facile  princess  in  all  kinds  of  litera- 
ture ;  there  was  myself,  full  of  mathe- 
matics, and  everything  relating  to  col- 
onies; there  was  Horner  for  political 
economy,  Murray  for  general  subjects ; 
besides,  might  we  not,  from  our  great 
and  never-to-be-doubted  success,  fairly 
hope  to  receive  help  from  such  levia- 
thans as  Playfair,  Dugald  Stewart, 
Robinson,  Thomas  Brown,  Thomson, 
and  others?  All  this  was  irresistible, 


and  Jeffrey  could  not  deny  that  he  hac. 
already  been  the  author  of  many  im 
portant  papers  in  existing  periodicals.' 
With  this  enthusiastic  impulse  oi 
Sydney  Smith,  the  "Review"  wag 
agreed  upon.  It  was  seven  months 
however,  before  it  could  be  brought 
to  the  light,  so  many  petty  obstacles 
were  interposed  in  the  negotiations  for 
a  publisher,  getting  together  the  con- 
tributors, and  other  difficulties,  seem- 
ingly inseparable  from  a  new  under- 
taking of  the  kind.  Brougham,  who 
proved  one  of  its  stanchest  supports, 
was  balky  at  the  start,  and  at  one  time 
declined  to  have  any  connection  with 
it.  This,  he  tells  us,  was  from  doubts 
of  its  management  and  its  proper  in 
dependence.  When  he  found  that 
Jeffrey  was  to  be  its  editor,  and  that 
the  publishers  were  to  have  no  control 
over  its  papers,  he  assented,  and  wrote 
no  fewer  than  seven  articles  for  the 
first  number,  four  of  them  on  books  of 
travels,  two  on  science — reviews  of 
Wood's  Optics  and  Playfair's  Illustra- 
tions of  the  Huttonian  Theory,  and 
one  on  his  peculiar  topic,  the  "  Crisis 
of  the  Susrar  Colonies."  Of  five  arti- 

O 

cles  which  he  contributed  to  the  second 
number,  four  were  on  scientific  topics. 
In  the  fourth  he  reviewed  the  "  Trans- 
actions of  the  American  Philosophical 
Society." 

In  the  first  twenty  numbers  of  the 
Review,  seventy-five  articles  were  writ 
ten  by  Jeffrey,  twenty-three  by  Sydney 
Smith,  fourteen  by  Horner,  and  eighty 
by  Brougham.  These  were  essentially 
the  founders  of  the  Review.  Its  suc- 
cess was  immediate.  The  numbers 
were  reprinted,  and  a  large  circulation 
established.  There  were  good  reasons 


HEN  BY,  LORD  BROUGHAM. 


501 


(or  this  in  the  boldness  and  even  reck- 
less independence  of  the  work,  the 
variety  and  spirit  of  its  articles,  and 
the  intellectual  harvest  it  was  reaping 
from  the  first  glowing  efforts  of  con- 
tributors destined  to  high  distinction 
in  the  literary  world.  But  its  main 
strength  lay  in  the  cause  of  Reform, 
which  it  supported.  "Its  great  im- 
portance," writes  Brougham,  "  can  only 
be  judged  of  by  recollecting  the  state 
of  things  at  the  time  Smith's  bold  and 
sagacious  idea  was  started.  Protection 
reigned  triumphant  —  parliamentary 
representation  in  Scotland  had  scarce- 
ly an  existence — the  Catholics  were 
unemancipated — the  Test  Acts  unre- 
pealed — men  were  hung  for  stealing  a 
few  shillings  in  a  dwelling-house — no 
counsel  allowed  to  a  prisoner  accused 
of  a  capital  offence — the  horrors  of  the 
slave-trade  tolerated  —  the  prevailing 
tendencies  of  the  age,  jobbery  and  cor- 
ruption." 

In  the  autumn  of  1804,  Brougham 
ventured  upon  a  tour  on  the  Continent, 
an  undertaking  liable  to  painful  inter- 
ruption to  an  Englishman  at  that  time, 
under  the  system  of  reprisals  adopted 
by  the  Napoleonic  government.  To 
obviate  this,  Brougham  went  as  an 
American,  furnished  with  an  Ameri- 
can passport  and  papers.  His  first 
point  was  Holland,  which  he  visited 
to  obtain  information  on  the  slave- 
trade,  the  first  great  public  question 
to  which,  as  we  have  noted,  he  was 
directing  his  talents.  At  the  Hague 
he  had  opportunities  of  discussing  the 
question  with  the  leading  statesmen  of 
the  country,  while  he  noticed  the  do- 
mestic slavery  of  the  Hollanders  under 
fche  exactions  of  France.  In  October 


he  reached  Venice ;  and  his  diary,  an 
off-hand  piece  of  work,  without  effort 
at  finish,  is  filled  with  jottings  of  pic- 
tures, theatres,  manners,  and  costumes 
Meanwhile  he  is  writing  an  article  for 
the  Edinburgh  Review  "  On  the  Mili- 
tary Character  of  the  different  Euro- 
pean Armies,"  on  the  completion  of 
which  he  solaces  himself  with  a  gon- 
dola for  two  or  three  hours  "  to  enjoy 
the  lagune,"  and  immediately  after- 
wards attends  high  mass,  and  finds 
"something  solemn  in  the  thing," 
though  it  was  performed  by  the  parish 
priest,  "  with  a  courier-like  velocity  "• 
perhaps  on  that  account,  the  more  ac- 
ceptable to  the  mercurial  and  haste- 
loving  traveller.  After  three  or  four 
days'  rapid  journeying  over  rough 
roads,  with  an  expedition  worthy  his 
assumed  American  character,  "  fa- 
tigued and  jolted  to  shivers,"  he  came 
in  sight  of  the  Eternal  City,  an  event 
recorded  in  the  following  memoran- 
dum: "The  distant  view  is  fine;  but 
all  the  Campagna  di  Roma  is  absolutely 
a  waste  of  waving  ground  in  heath,  lean 
grass,  and  scattered,  stunted  vegeta- 
tion, with  a  cottage,  church,  and 
chapel,  and  crucifix  here  and  there. 
Met  vast  flocks  of  sheep  and  lambs. 
The  shepherds  seem  an  odd  race  of 
peasants,  covered  with  hairy  skins; 
dos;s  all  crossed  with  the  wolf.  View 

O 

of  Rome  at  a  distance  very  fine,  from 
the  unevenness  of  its  foundations  and 
the  number  of  cupolas.  St.  Peter's 
looks  like  St.  Paul's,  only  on  a  gigan- 
tic scale.  Passed  the  Tiber  —  red, 
rather  than  l  flavus  Tiberis ' — by  an 
old  bridge.  Passport  civilly  looked 
at  at  the  Porta  del  Poj  olo — fine  obe- 
lisk. Came  through  tho  Corso ;  passed 


I 


HEXRY,  LOED  BEOTIGHAM. 


Trajan's  pillar  and  some  fine  buildings ; 
arrived  here  in  the  Venetian  house  of 
the  minister  and  couriers—  a  very 
(arge,  good  palace,  surrounded  by 
others,  some  of  which  have  eighty- 
four  windows  on  a  side.  After  dining 
at  the  Cafe  di  Venezia,  and  sleeping, 
which  was  necessary  to  remove  a  fever 
which  was  oppressing  me,  went  to  the 
opera;  neat,  but  small.  An  opera 
buffa  and  a  comedy  in  one  act.  Music 
very  pretty.  Tiers  of  stage  boxes  are 
called  after  the  great  composers.  Ac- 
tors very  submissive,  as  usual — bow 
when  applauded."  The  next  day  is 
giving  to  sight-seeing,  and  at  its  close 
the  feverish  traveller  is  off  for  Naples, 
glances  at  Vesuvius,  hurries  through 
the  Virgilian  localities,  is  back  to 
Rome  at  the  end  of  a  week,  gives  a 
month  to  Austria  and,  at  the  close  of 
January,  is  again  in  England. 

In  the  following  year,  1806,  arrived 
the  desired  opportunity  for  diplomatic 
employment,  when  the  Whigs  came 
nto  power  for  a  short  time,  on  the 
death  of  Pitt.  An  expedition  to  Por- 
tugal was  determined  upon,  to  prevent 
the  threatened  occupation  of  the  coun- 
try by  Buonaparte.  A  mission  was 
appointed,  consisting  of  the  Earl  of 
Rosslyn,  the  Earl  of  St.  Vincent,  and 
Lt.-General  Simcoe,  and  Brougham 

'  o 

was  selected  by  Fox  to  accompany  it  as 
Secretary.  Gen.  Simcoe  being  taken  ill 
on  the  voyage  to  Lisbon,  and  compelled 
to  return  immediately  to  England,  the 
work  of  the  commission  was  carried 
on  by  Brougham  and  the  others.  The 
conduct  of  this  affair  brought  our 
young  advocate  directly  into  relation 
with  the  public  events  of  the  conti- 
aent  and  the  embassy  lost  nothino- 


from  any  lack  of  activity  or  intrepid 
ity  on  the  part  of  its  Secretary  during 
the  few  months  it  was  employed  in 
Portugal.  After  his  return,  Brougham 
became  a  resident  of  London,  and  was 
in  constant  communication  with  the 
Whig  leaders  in  the  discussion  of  pub- 
lic questions,  though  their  short  tenure 
of  power  enabled  them  to  do  nothing 
for  his  official  advancement.  In  the 
meantime  he  was  admitted  to  the  Eng- 
lish bar,  in  1808,  with  a  view  of  prac- 
ticing on  the  influential  Northern  Cir- 
cuit. He  was  successful  in  this,  though 
by  no  means  disposed  to  surrender 
himself  wholly  to  the  profession,  poli 
tics  and  literature  being  still  his  fa- 
vorite pursuits.  His  Whig  friends 
were '  desirous  of  securing  his  aid  in 
Parliament;  and  in  January,  1810,  he 
was  offered  by  the  Duke  of  Bedford, 
through  Lord  Holland,  a  seat  for 
the  borough  of  Camelford,  under  the 
Duke's  control  as  successor  to  Lord 
Henry  Petty,  on  his  accession  to  the 
peerage  as  Marquis  of  Lansdowne. 
The  offer  was  accepted,  and  thus  the 
great  advocate  of  the  Reform  Bill  de- 
stroying such  opportunities,  came  intc 
Parliament  a  representative  of  a  pri- 
vate borough.  His  first  speech  on  the 
2d  of  March,  was  in  support  of  a  mo- 
tion of  Whitbread,  of  a  vote  of  cen- 
sure on  the  government  for  keeping 
private  a  report  of  the  Expedition  to 
the  Scheldt,  worthy  of  notice  here  for 
the  testimony  borne  by  Homer  to  the 
success  of  Brougham  on  its  delivery. 
His  language  and  manner  were  said  by 
him  to  be  thoroughly  in  harmony  with 
the  style  which  Parliament  demanded. 
During  the  first  session  he  also  spoke 
on  one  of  those  reform  questions  which 


i  • 


HENRY,  LORD  BROUGHAM. 


503 


afterward  so  much  engaged  his  atten- 
tion— the  abuse  of  flogging  in  the 
army  and  navy.  This  was  followed 
by  no  action  in  Parliament ;  but  out- 
side of  it,  in  no  long  time,  Brougham 
had  the  opportunity  of  vindicating  his 
principles,  as  well  as  of  asserting  the 
liberty  of  the  press  in  court,  in  the 
successful  defence  of  the  Hunts  against 
a  criminal  information  growing  out  of 
their  publishing  an  alleged  libellous 
article  on  the  subject  in  their  news- 
paper, "  The  Examiner." 

The  most  important  speech  of 
Brougham  in  Parliament  during  this 
first  session  was  in  support  of  further 
legislation  to  repress  the  traffic  in 
slaves,  which,  for  lack  of  sufficient 
penalties,  still  existed,  notwithstand- 
ing the  Act  passed  for  the  abolition  of 
the  trade  several  years  before.  In  his 
speech  in  June,  he  thus  vigorously  at- 
tacked the  abettors  of  the  nefarious 
traffic :  "  It  is  not  commerce  but  crime 
that  they  are  driving.  Traders,  or 
merchants,  do  they  presume  to  call 
themselves !  and  in  cities  like  London 
and  Liverpool,  the  very  creations  of 
honest  trade?  I  will  give  them  the 
right  name,  at  length,  and  call  them 
cowardly  suborners  of  piracy  and  mer- 
cenary murder." 

A  bill,  which  he  subsequently  intro- 
duced, declaring  a  participation  in  the 
slave- trade  a  felony  punishable  with 
transportation  or  imprisonment,  was 
passed  without  a  dissenting  vote.  His 
next  great  success,  upon  which  he  after- 
wards greatly  prided  himself,  was  that 
which,  in  1812,  attended  his  efforts  for 
the  repeal  of  the  Orders  in  Council, 
equally  injurious  to  the  country  and 
unjust  to  neutral  powers,  by  which 


Parliament,  in  a  hazardous  exercise  of 
authority  or  assumption  of  power,  had 
endeavored  to  retaliate  upon  the  com- 
mercial policy  of  Napoleon  in  his 
issue  of  the  Berlin  and  Milan  Decrees. 
"•The  repeal  of  the  Orders  in  Council," 
.says  Brougham  in  his  Memoirs,  "was 
my  greatest  achievement.  It  was  sec- 
ond to  none  of  the  many  efforts  made 
by  me,  and  not  altogether  without 
success,  to  ameliorate  the  condition  of 
my  fellow-men.  In  these  I  had  the 
sympathy  and  aid  of  others,  but  in  the 
battle  against  the  Orders  in  Council  I 
fought  alone." 

Parliament  being  dissolved  in  1812, 
and  the  borough  of  Camelford  having 
been  sold,  being  no  longer  at  the  Duke 
of  Bedford's  disposal,  Brougham  en- 
tered upon  the  open  contest  for  Liver- 
pool, in  which  he  suffered  a  defeat, 
Canning  being  elected.  In  a  speech  to 
the  electors  he  attacked  with  great  elo- 
quence the  policy  of  Pitt,  turning  to 
account  the  news  which  had  that  day 
been  received  of  the  burning  of  Mos- 


cow. 


For  the  ensuing  three  years  Brough- 
am remained  out  of  Parliament,  not 
entering  it  again  till  1816,  when  fie 
was  returned  by  the  influence  of  the 
Earl  of  Darlington  for  the  borough  of 
Winchelsea,  which  he  continued  to 
represent  for  fourteen  years.  He  now 
identified  himself  closely  with  various 
questions  of  reform,  legal  and  parlia- 
mentary, and  began  his  labors  in  the 
cause  of  education  by  instituting  an 
inquiry  into  the  instruction  of  the 
poor  in  the  metropolis.  The  revela- 
tions resulting  from  this  investigation 
led  him  to  further  efforts  in  the  cause 
outside  of  Parliament,  in  aiding  in  the 


504 


HEKRY,  LORD  BROUGHAM. 


formation  of  the  London  Mechanics' 
Institution  in  1823,  and  the  subsequent 
publication,  entitled,  "Practical  Ob- 
servations on  the  Education  of  the 
People,  addressed  to  the  Working 
Classes  and  their  Employers,"  which 
ran  through  twenty  editions.  In  1825 
he  was  elected  to  the  honorary  office 
of  Lord  Rector  of  the  University  of 
Glasgow,  as  the  successor  to  Sir  James 
Mackintosh,  in  preference  to  Sir  Wal- 
ter Scott.  In  furtherance  of  the  work 
of  education,  he  became  largely  inter- 
ested in  the  foundation  of  the  Univer- 
sity of  London,  and  in  establishing,  in 
1827,  the  Society  for  the  Diffusion  of 
Useful  Knowledge,  of  whose  commit- 
tee he  long  acted  as  Chairman,  and  to 
whose  numerous  valuable  publications 
in  various  departments  of  literature  he 
led  the  way,  by  the  composition  of 
their  first  work  issued  from  the  press, 
his  admirable  discourse  "  On  the  Ob- 
jects, Pleasures  and  Advantages  of 
Science."  All  this  was  done  within 
his  second  parliamentary  period,  from, 
1816  to  1830.  That  included  also  his 
series  of  legal  exertions  in  the  service 
of  the  Princess  of  Wales,  as  her  Coun- 
sel during  her  difficulties  with  the 
Prince  Regent,  culminating  in  his  de- 
fence in  1821,  of  that  lady,  when,  by 
the  death  of  George  III.,  she  had  at- 
tained the  rank  of  Queen,  and  was 
brought  to  trial  on  the  charge  of  in- 
fidelity to  her  husband,  before  the 
House  of  Lords.  The  peculiar  nature 
of  the  accusations  brought  against  her, 
with  the  well-known  libertine  char- 
acter of  George  IV.,  and  the  part  the 
Tory  authorities  took  in  the  prosecu- 
tion ;  sympathy  for  the  woman,  justly 
regarded  by  a  large  party  as  the  vic- 


tim of  an  unscrupulous  opposition  • 
the  political  prejudices  naturally  ex 
cited  by  the  contest — all  drew  the  at- 
tention of  the  people  to  the  advocate 
of  the  distressed  Queen,  whom  she  had 
appointed  her  attorney-general.  With 
many  in  the  country  it  was  the  King 
rather  than  the  Queen  who  was  on  trial 
and  Brougham  was  regarded  by  them, 
not  only  as  the  chivalrous  champion 
of  a  much-injured  lady,  but  a  vindi- 
cator of  the  popular  liberties  in  de- 
nouncing a  series  of  bold  acts  of  op 
pression,  implicating  the  highest  pub- 
lic officers  in  the  realm.  He  devoted 
himself  to  the  defence  with  his  unusual 
unwearied  energy  and  dexterous  re- 
sources, and  his  exertions  were  reward 
ed  by  the  acquittal  of  the  Queen. 

The  year  1828  was  memorable  for 
Brougham's  earnest  engagement  in  the 
work  of  Law  Reform,  the  cause  with 
which  his  later  years  were  identified, 
and  which,  in  its  beneficent  success, 
sheds  the  greatest  glory  upon  his  life. 
In  an  elaborate  speech  in  February, 
continued  through  nine  hours,  he  sur- 
veyed the  whole  field,  concluding  with 
an  appeal  to  the  House  of  Commons, 
in  which  he  introduced  with  effect  the 
victory  over  Napoleon,  again  to  be  van- 
quished in  the  acts  of  peace.  The  con- 
test upon  which  he  thus  entered  was  a 
long  one;  but  it  was  triumphant  in 
the  end,  and  he  lived  to  witness  its 
success. 

In  1830,  on  the  death  of  George  IV., 
a  dissolution  of  Parliament  took  place, 
when  Brougham  was  invited  to  stand 
for  Yorkshire,  the  county  famed  for  its 
liberal  principles,  which  had  so  nobly 
sustained  Wilberforce  in  his  long  con- 
test with  slavery,  and  was  now  seeking 


HEKRY,  LOED   BROUGHAM. 


505 


a  candidate  to  promote  the  great  work 
of  Parliamentary  Reform.  In  Brough- 
am they  had  such  an  advocate,  and  he 
was  triumphantly  returned.  He  felt 
the  value  of  this  mark  of  confidence ; 
for  he  had  previously  sat  in  Parlia- 
ment by  the  favor  of  influential  friends, 
a  representative  of  private  boroughs ; 
he  was  now  chosen  by  the  most  dis- 
tinguished and  powerful  constituency 
in  the  country.  He  at  once  became 
the  leader  of  the  Liberal  party,  and 
was  about  engaging,  on  the  opening  of 
Parliament,  in  the  work  of  reform  in 
that  body,  when,  Earl  Grey  being  sud- 
denly called  to  office,  in  the  political 
adjustments  which  ensued  in  the  for- 
mation of  the  new  ministry,  he  was 
promoted  to  the  peerage  as  Lord  Chan- 
cellor, with  the  title  of  Baron  Brough- 
am and  Vaux — the  latter  name  being 
derived  from  an  old  family  in  Nor- 
mandy with  which  his  ancestors  were 
connected.  With  characteristic  energy, 
on  the  very  day  on  which  his  peerage 
was  made  out,  the  23d  of  November, 
1830,  he  introduced  into  the  House  of 
Lords  four  bills  relating  to  the  reform 
or  reorganization  of  the  Courts  of  Law, 
two  of  them  affecting  the  practice  of 
the  Court  of  Chancery  to  which  he 
was  then  just  introduced.  "  Look  at 
the  gigantic  Brougham,"  said  Sydney" 
Smith,  in  his  Speech  on  the  Keform 
Bill,  "  sworn  in  at  twelve  o'clock,  and 
before  six  P.M.  he  has  a  bill  on  the  ta- 
ble abolishing  the  abuses  of  a  court 
which  has  been  the  curse  of  the  peo- 
ple of  England  for  centuries.  For 
twenty-five  long  years  did  Lord  Eldon 
sit  in  that  Court,  surrounded  with 
misery  and  sorrow,  which  he  never 
held  up  a  finger  to  alleviate.  The 
64 


widow  and  the  orphan  cried  to  him 
as  vainly  as  the  town-crier  when  he 
offers  a  small  reward  for  a  full  purse. 
The  bankrupt  of  the  Court  became  the 
lunatic  of  the  Court.  Estates  mould- 
ered away  and  mansions  fell  down,  but 
'  the  fees  came  in  and  all  was  well ;  but 
in  an  instant  the  iron  mace  of  Brougham 
shivered  to  atoms  the  House  of  Fraud 
and  of  Delay.  And  this  is  the  man  who 
will  help  to  govern  you — who  bottoms 
his  reputation  on  doing  good  to  you — 
who  knows  that  to  reform  abuses  is 
the  safest  basis  of  fame,  and  the  surest 
instrument  of  power — who  uses  the 
highest  gift  of  reason  and  the  most 
splendid  efforts  of  genius  to  rectify  all 
those  abuses,  which  all  the  genius  and 
talent  of  the  profession  have  hitherto 
been  employed  to  justify  and  protect. 
Look  you  to  Brougham,  and  turn  you 
to  that  side  where  he  waves  his  long 
and  lean  finger,  and  mark  well  that 
face  which  nature  has  marked  so  forci- 
bly— which  dissolves  pensions,  turns 
jobbers  into  honest  men,  scares  away 
the  plunderer  of  the  public,  and  is  a 
terror  to  him  who  doth  evil  to  the 
people !" 

Lord  Brougham  held  the  Chancel- 
lorship for  four  years,  going  out  of 
office  with  a  change  of  ministry  in 
1834.  This  period  was  distinguished 
by  his  successful  engineering  of  the 
Reform  Bill,  which  was  carried  in  the 
House  of  Lords  by  his  bold  handling 
of  the  King,  in  inducing  him  to  con- 
sent, if  it  should  be  needed,  to  a  large 
creation  of  new  peers.  This  act  of 
prerogative  being  secured,  the  threat 
proved  sufficient,  and  the  bill  was 
passed.  Other  measures  of  import- 
ance in  which  he  assisted,  enumerated 


506 


HENRY,  LORD  BROUGHAM. 


by  liiinself,  marked  the  &\v  years  of 
nis  administration  as  Chancellor  un- 
der the  first  Eeform  Parliament, — the 
abolition  of  slavery  in  the  Colonies; 
the  opening  of  the  East  India  trade, 
and  destruction  of  the  Company's  mo- 
nopoly ;  the  amendment  of  the  criminal 
laws ;  vast  improvements  in  the  whole 
municipal  jurisprudence,  both  as  re- 
gards law  and  equity ;  the  settlement 
of  the  Bank  Charter ;  the  total  reform 
of  the  Scotch  municipal  corporations ; 
the  entire  alteration  of  the  Poor  Laws ; 
an  ample  commencement  made  in  re- 
forming the  Irish  Church,  by  the  abo- 
lition of  ten  bishoprics. 

After  his  retirement  from  the  Chan- 
cellorship, Lord  Brougham  never  held 
office  in  any  administration  of  his 
party,  a  neglect  attributed  to  his  pe- 
culiarities of  temper  and  conduct ;  but 
he  continued,  in  the  House  of  Lords,  his 
advocacy  of  measures  of  reform,  chief- 
ly in  reference  to  the  administration  of 
the  law.  He  became  also  much  em- 
ployed in  various  literary  productions 
of  a  philosophical  and  critical  char- 
acter, including  a  series  of  Lives  of 
the  Men  of  Letters  and  Science,  and 
the  Statesmen  of  the  time  of  George 
III.,  comprising,  in  natural  philosophy, 
Black,  Watt,  Priestley,  Cavendish,  and 


their  fellows;  in  literature,  Voltaire 
Rousseau,  Hume,  Robertson,  Johnson 
and  Gibbon;  and  in  statesmanship, 
Chatham,  Lord  North,  Burke,  Fox, 
Pitt,  Sheridan  and  others.  A  work  on 
"Political  Philosophy,"  published  in 
three  volumes,  1840-'44,  is  one  of  the 
most  valuable  of  his  contributions  to 
this  department  of  study.  He  also 
wrote  a  volume  on  Natural  Theology 
His  works,  as  collected  by  himself, 
in  1837,  are  comprised  in  ten  octavo 
volumes;  to  which  hav£  subsequently 
been  added  three  volumes  of  collected 
"  Contributions  to  the  Edinburgh  Re 
view." 

Lord  Brougham  was  married  in  1819 
to  Mary  Anne,  eldest  daughter  of 
Thomas  Eden,  brother  of  Lord  Auck- 
land. She  was  the  widow  at  the  time 
of  this  marriage  of  a  Mr.  Spalding. 
Two  daughters  were  the  fruit  of  thia 
union,  one  dying  in  infancy,  the  other 
in  1839.  In  his  later  years  the  health 
of  Lord  Brougham  was  much  impaired, 
and  he  frequently  resorted,  for  the  sake 
of  the  milder  climate,  to  a  residence  at 
Cannes  in  the  south,  of  France,  in  a 
chateau  which  he  had  built  for  him- 
self. Here  his  death  occurred  on  the 
7th  of  May,  1868,  in  the  ninetieth 
year  of  hi  3  age. 


Kappel 


LiJgerusss  after  a  painting  fry  TJwm-as  Phillips. 


Johnaon.'Vfilson  fc  Co..Publialiers,New"York 


LORD     BYRON. 


rTIHE  family  of  Lord  Byron  traces 
-L  its  descent  to  the  Byrons  of  Nor- 
mandy, who  came  to  England  with 
William  the  Conqueror.*  In  Domes- 
day-book the  name  of  Ralph  de  Burun 
ranks  high  among  the  tenants  of  land 
in  Nottinghamshire;  and  in  the  suc- 
ceeding reigns,  under  the  title  of  Lords 
of  Horestan  Castle,  we  find  his  de- 
scendants holding  considerable  posses- 
sions in  Derbyshire,  to  which,  afterward, 
in  the  time  of  Edward  I.,  were  added 
the  lands  of  Rochdale  in  Lancashire. 
Its  antiquity,  however,  was  not  the  only 
distinction  by  which  the  name  of  By- 
ron was  recommended  to  its  inheritor ; 
those  personal  merits  and  accomplish- 
ments which  form  the  best  ornament 
of  a  genealogy  seem  to  have  been  dis- 
played in  no  ordinary  degree  by  some 
of  his  ancestors.  At  the  siege  of  Cal- 
ais, under  Edward  III.,  and  on  the 
memorable  fields  of  Cressy,  Bosworth, 
and  Marston  Moor,  the  Byrons  reaped 
honors  both  of  rank  and  fame,  of  which 
their  young  descendant  has  shown 
himself  proudly  conscious.  In  the 
reign  of  Henry  VIII.,  upon  the  disso- 
lution of  monasteries,  the  church  and 

*  Abridged  from,  the  "Life  and  Correspond- 
ence "  by  Thomas  Moore. 


priory  of  Newstead,  with  the  lands 
adjoining,  were  added  to  the  posses- 
sions of  the  Byron  family.  These 
spoils  of  the  ancient  religion  were 
conferred  upon  the  grand-nephew  of 
the  gallant  soldier  who  fought  .by  the 
side  of  Richmond  at  Bosworth,  and 
was  distinguished  as  "  Sir  John  Byron 
the  Little  with  the  great  beard."  At 
the  coronation  of  James  L,  we  find  an- 
other representative  of  the  family  se- 
lected as  an  object  of  royal  favor,  be- 
ing made  on  this  occasion  a  Knight  of 
the  Bath.  From  the  following  reign 
(Charles  I.),  the  nobility  of  the  By- 
rons dates  its  origin.  In  the  year 
1643,  Sir  John  Byron,  great  grandson 
of  him  who  succeeded  to  the  rich  do- 
mains of  Newstead,  was  created  Baron 
Byron  of  Rochdale,  and  seldom  has  a 
title  been  conferred  for  more  high  and 
honorable  services  than  those  of  this 
nobleman.  Through  the  history  of 
the  Civil  Wars,  we  trace  his  name  in 
connection  with  the  varying  fortunes 
of  the  king,  and  find  him  faithful,  per 
severing,  and  disinterested  to  the  last. 
Such  are  a  few  of  the  gallant  and 
distinguished  personages  of  this  noble 
house.  By  the  maternal  side  also  Lord 
Byron  had  to  pride  himself  on  a  lino 


508 


LORD   BYRON 


of  ancestry  as  illustrious  as  any  that 
Scotland  can  boast,  his  mother,  who  was 
one  of  the  Gordons  of  Gight,  having 
been  a  descendant  of  that  Sir  William 
Gordon,  who  was  the  third  son  of  the 
Earl  of  Huntley  by  the  daughter  of 
James  I. 

After  the  eventful  period  of  the 
Civil  Wars,  the  celebrity  of  the  name 
appears  to  have  died  away  for  near  a 
century.  About  the  year  1750,  the 
shipwreck  and  sufferings  of  Mr.  By- 
ron, afterward  Admiral,  awakened 
in  no  small  degree  the  attention  and 
sympathy  of  the  public.  Not  long 
after,  a  less  innocent  notoriety  attach- 
ed itself  to  two  other  members  of  the 
family — one,  the  grand-uncle  of  the 
poet,  and  the  other,  his  father.  The 
former,  in  the  year  1765,  stood  his 
trial  before  the  House  of  Peers  for 
killing,  in  a  duel,  or  rather  scuffle,  his 
relation  and  neighbor,  Mr.  Chaworth ; 
and  the  latter,  having  earned  off  to 
the  Continent  the  wife  of  Lord  Car- 
marthen, on  the  marquis  obtaining  a 
divorce  from  the  lady,  was  married  to 
her.  Of  this  short  union,  one  daugh- 
ter only  was  the  issue,  Augusta  Byron, 
afterwards  the  wife  of  Colonel  Leigh. 

The  first  wife  of  the  father  of  the 
poet  having  died  in  1784,  he,  in  the 
following  year,  married  Miss  Cathar- 
ine Gordon,  only  child  and  heiress  of 
George  Gordon,  Esq.,  of  Gight.  In 
addition  to  the  estate  of  Gight,  this 
lady  possessed  no  inconsiderable  prop- 
erty, and  it  was  known  to  be  solely 
with  a  view  of  relieving  himself  from 
his  debts  that  Mr.  Byron  paid  his  ad- 
dresses to  her.  Soon  after  the  mar- 
riage they  removed  to  Scotland.  The 
creditors  of  Mr.  Byron  now  lost  no 


time  in  pressing  their  demands;  and 
not  only  was  the  whole  of  her  ready 
money,  bank  shares,  fisheries,  etc.,  sac- 
rificed to  satisfy  them,  but  a  large 
sum  raised  by  mortgage  on  the  estate 
for  the  same  purpose.  In  the  sum- 
mer of  1786  she  and  her  husband  pro- 
ceeded  to  France ;  and  in  the  follow- 
ing year  the  estate  of  Gight  itself  was 
sold  and  the  purchase  money  applied 
to  the  payment  of  debts,  with  the  ex- 
ception of  a  small  sum  invested  in 
trustees  for  the  use  of  Mrs.  Byron. 

From  France  Mrs.  Byron  returned 
to  England  at  the  close  of  the  year 
1787,  and  on  the  22d  of  January,  1788, 
gave  birth,  in  Holies-street,  London,  to 
her  first  and  only  child,  George  Gor- 
don Byron.  From  London  she  pro- 
ceeded with  her  infant  to  Scotland, 
and  in  the  year  1790,  took  up  her  resi- 
dence in  Aberdeen,  where  she  was  soon 
after  joined  by  Captain  Byron.  Here 
for  a  short  time  they  lived  together 
but,  their  union  being  by  no  means 
happy,  a  separation  took  place  between 
them,  and  Mrs.  Byron  removed  to  lodg- 
ings at  the  other  end  of  the  street, 
Notwithstanding  this  schism,  they  con- 
tinued to  visit  each  other ;  but  the  el- 
ements of  discord  were  strong  on  both 
sides,  and  their  separation  was,  at  last, 
complete  and  final. 

By  an  accident  which,  it  is  said,  oc- 
curred at  the  time  of  Byron's  birth, 
one  of  his  feet  was  twisted  out  of  its 
natural  position;  and  this  defect  (chief- 
ly from  the  contrivances  eniploj^ed  to 
remedy  it)  was  a  source  of  much  pain 
and  inconvenience  to  him,  during  his 
earlier  years.  The  expedients  first 
made  use  of  to  restore  the  limb  tc 
shape  were  adopted  by  the  advice  of 


LORD  BYEOK. 


511 


.  lose  ground  in  his  education,  during 
this  interval  he  received  lessons  in 
Latin  from  a  respectable  schoolmaster, 
Mr.  Rogers,  who  read  parts  of  Virgil 
and  Cicero  with  him,  and  represents  his 
proficiency  to  have  been,  for  his  age, 
considerable.  Finding  but  little  bene- 
fit from  the  Nottingham  practitioner, 
Mrs.  Byron,  in  the  summer  of  the 
year  1799,  thought  it  best  to  remove 
her  boy  to  London,  where,  at  the  sug- 
gestion of  Lord  Carlisle,  he  was  put  un- 
der the  care  of  Dr.  Baillie.  It  being  an 
object,  too,  to  place  him  at  some  quiet 
school,  where  the  means  adapted  for 
the  cure  of  his  infirmity  might  be 
more  easily  attended  to,  the  establish- 
ment of  Dr.  Glennie,  at  Dulwich,  was 
2hosen  for  the  purpose. 

When  he  had  been  nearly  two  years 
vmder  the  tuition  of  Dr.  Glennie,  his 
mother,  discontented  at  the  slowness  of 
his  progress — although  she  herself,  by 
her  interference,  was  the  cause  of  it — 
entreated  so  urgently  of  Lord  Carlisle 
to  have  him  removed  to  a  public  school, 
that  her  wish  was  at  length  acceded 
to  ;  and  "  accordingly,"  says  Dr.  Glen- 
nie, "  to  Harrow  he  went,  as  little  pre- 
pared as  it  is  natural  to  suppose  from 
two  years  of  elementary  instruction, 
thwarted  by  every  art  that  could  es- 
trange the  mind  of  youth  from  precep- 
tor, from  school,  and  from  all  serious 
study."  To  a  shy  disposition,  such  as 
Byron's  was  in  his  youth,  a  transition 
from  a  quiet  establishment,  like  that 
of  Dulwich  Grove,  to  the  bustle  of  a 
great  public  school,  was  sufficiently 
trying.  We  find  from  his  own  account 
that,  for  the  first  year  and  a  half,  he 
hated  Harrow.  The  activity  and  soci- 
ableuess  of  his  nature,  however,  soon 


conquered  this  repugnance  ;  and  from 
being,  as  he  says,  "  a  most  unpopular 
boy,"  he  rose  at  length  to  be  a  leader  in 
all  the  sports,  schemes,  and  mischief  of 
the  school.  At  Harrow,  Lord  Byron 
was  remarked  for  the  great  readiness 
of  his  general  information,  but  in  all 
other  respects  idle,  capable  of  great 
sudden  exertions,  but  of  few  continu- 
ous drudgeries.  His  qualities,  at  this 
time,  seemed  much  more  oratorical  and 
martial,  than  political ;  and  it  was  the 
opinion  of  Dr.  Durry,  the  head  master, 
that  he  would  turn  out  an  orator.  His 
first  verses  (in  English)  were  received 
but  coolly. 

We  come  now  to  an  event,  which 
according  to  his  own  deliberate  persua- 
sion, exercised  a  lasting  influence  over 
the  w^hole  of  his  subsequent  character 
and  career.  It  was  in  the  year  1803, 
that  he  conceived  an  attachment,  which 
sank  so  deep  into  his  mind  as  to  give 
a  color  to  all  his  future  life.  On  leav- 
ing Bath,  Mrs.  Byron  took  up  her  abode 
in  lodgings  at  Nottingham — Newstead 
Abbey  being  at  that  time  let  to  Lord 
Grey  de  Ruthen — and  during  the  Har- 
row vacations  of  this  year  she  was 
joined  there  by  her  son.  So  attached 
was  he  to  Newstead,  that  he  was  con- 
tinually in  its  neighborhood.  An  inti- 
macy soon  sprang  up  between  him  and 
his  noble  tenant,  and  an  apartment  in 
the  Abbey  was  henceforth  always  at 
his  service.  To  the  family  of  Miss 
Chaworth,  who  resided  at  Annesley, 
in  the  neighborhood,  he  had  been  made 
known  some  time  before  in  London, 
and  he  now  renewed  his  acquaintance 
with  them.  The  young  heiress  pos- 
sessed much  personal  beauty,  with  a 
disposition  the  most  amiable  and  at 


512 


LORD   BYSOJS'. 


t  aching.  Byron  at  this  time  was  in 
his  nineteenth  year,  and  the  object  of 
his  adoration  two  years  older.  The 
six  short  summer  weeks  which  he  now 
passed  in  her  company,  were  sufficient 
to  lay  the  foundation  of  a  feeling  for 
all  life.  At  first  he  used  to  return  to 
Newstead  Abbey  every  night ;  but,  be- 
ing induced  one  evening  to  remain  at 
Annesley,  he  stayed  there  during  the 
rest  of  his  visit.  His  time  here  was 
mostly  passed  in  riding  with  Miss  Cha- 
worth  and  her  cousin;  sitting  in  idle 
reverie,  as  was  his  custom,  pulling  at 
his  handkerchief,  or  in  firing  at  a  mark. 
During  all  this  time  he  had  the  pain 
of:  knowing  that  the  heart  of  her  he 
loved  was  occupied  by  another — that, 
as  he  himself  expressed  it : 

"Her  sighs  were  not  for  him;  to  her  he  was 
Even  as  a  brother — but  no  more  1" 

Neither  is  it  probable  that,  had  even 
her  affections  been  disengaged,  Lord 
Byron  would  have  been  selected  as  the 
object  of  them.  Miss  Chaworth  look- 
ed upon  him  as  a  mere  schoolboy.  He 
was  in  his  manners,  too,  at  that  period, 
rough  and  odd,  and  by  no  means  pop- 
ular among  girls  of  his  own  age.  If 
at  any  moment  he  had  flattered  him- 
self with  the  hope  of  being  loved  by 
her,  a  circumstance  mentioned  in  his 
"  memoranda,"  as  one  of  the  most  pain- 
ful humiliations  to  which  the  defect  in 
his  foot  had  exposed  him,  must  have 
let  the  truth  in,  with  the  dreadful  cer- 
tainty, upon  his  heart.  He  was  either 
told  of,  or  overheard,  Miss  Chaworth 
saying  to  her  maid,  "  Do  you  think  I 
could  care  anything  for  that  lame 
boy  ?"  This  speech,  as  he  himself  de- 
scribed it,  was  like  a  shot  through  his 


heart.  Though  late  at  night  when  he 
heard  it,  he  instantly  darted  out  of  the 
house,  and  scarcely  knowing  whither 
he  ran,  never  stopped,  till  he  found 
himself  at  Newstead.  In  one  of  the 
most  interesting  of  his  poems,  "The 
Dream,"  he  has  drawn  a  picture  of 
this  youthful  love.  In  the  following 
year,  1805,  Miss  Chaworth  was  mar- 
ried to  his  successful  rival,  Mr.  John 
Winters. 

In  the  month  of  October,  1805,  he 
was  removed  to  Trinity  College,  Cam- 
bridge, and  it  was  in  the  summer  of 
this  year  that  he  first  engaged  in  pre- 
paring a  collection  of  his  vpoems  for 
the  press;  the  idea  of  printing  them 
first  occurred  to  him  during  his  vaca- 
tion at  Southwell.  From  this  moment 
the  desire  of  appearing  in  print  took 
entire  possession  of  him,  though  for 
the  present  his  ambition  did  not  ex- 
tend in  view  beyond  a  small  volume 
for  private  circulation.  In  consequence 
of  the  objection  of  his  friend,  the  Rev. 
Mr.  Becher,  to  a  certain  poem  in  this 
volume,  the  edition  was  suppressed, 
and  Lord  Byron  set  about  preparing 
another,  which  was  produced  about  six 
weeks  after.  The  fame  which  he  now 
reaped  within  a  limited  circle,  made 
him  more  eager  to  try  his  chance  on  a 
wider  field.  The  hundred  copies  of 
which  this  edition  consisted  were  hard- 
ly out  of  his  hands,  when  with  fresh 
activity  he  went  to  press  again,  and  his 
first  published  volume,  the  "  Hours  of 
Idleness,"  made  its  appearance.  Some 
new  pieces  which  he  had  written  in 
the  interim  were  added,  and  no  less 
than  twenty  of  those  contained  in  the 
former  volume  omitted.  The  rank  and 
name  of  Lord  Byron  gained  for  this 


LORD  BYKOK. 


513 


volume  a  considerable  circulation  in 
the  fashionable  world  of  London, 
which,  perhaps,  the  merits  of  the 
poetry  alone  might  not  have  attained. 
Upon  his  return  to  Cambridge  he 
again  engaged  in  all  the  dissipations 
that  were  at  that  time  so  frequent 
among  young  men  of  rank  and  fashion. 
In  the  spring  of  this  year,  1808,  ap- 
peared the  memorable  critique  upon 
the  "  Hours  of  Idleness  "  in  the  Edin- 
burgh Review.  The  effect  this  critic- 
ism produced  upon  him  can  only  be 
conceived  by  those  who,  besides  hav- 
ing an  adequate  notion  of  what  most 
poets  would  feel  under  such  an  attack, 
can  understand  all  that  there  was  in 
the  temper  and  disposition  of  Lord 
Byron  to  make  him  feel  it  with  ten- 
fold more  acuteness  than  others.  From 
his  sensitiveness  to  the  praise  of  the 
meanest  of  his  censors,  we  may  guess 
how  painfully  he  must  have  writhed 
under  the  sneers  of  the  highest.  A 
friend,  who  found  him  in  the  first  mo- 
ments of  excitement  after  reading  the 
article,  inquired  anxiously  whether  he 
had  received  a  challenge,  not  knowing 
how  else  to  account  for  the  fierce  defi- 
ance of  his  looks.  Among  the  less 
sentimental  effects  of  this  review  upon 
his  mind,  he  used  to  mention  that  on 
the  day  he  read  it,  he  drank  three  bot- 
tles of  claret,  to  his  own  share,  after 
dinner ;  that  nothing,  however,  relieved 
him  till  he  had  given  vent  to  his  indig- 
nation in  rhyme,  and  that  "  after  the 
first  twenty  lines  he  felt  himself  con- 
siderably better." 

His  time  at  Newstead   during  the 

autumn  was   principally  occupied  in 

enlarging  and  preparing  his  satire  for 

the  press.    This  work,  which  owed  its 

65 


force  and  spirit  chiefly  to  the  article 
we  have  just  spoken  of,  had  been  com 
menced  by  Lord  Byron  a  long  time 
before.  Tfye  importance  of  this  ne\^ 
move  in  literature  seems  to  have  been 
fully  appreciated  by  him.  He  saw 
that  his  chances  of  future  eminence 
now  depended  upon  the  effort  he  was 
about  to  make,  and  therefore  deliber- 
ately collected  all  his  energies  for  the 
spring ;  and  the  misanthropic  mood  of 
mind  into  which  he  had  fallen  at  this 
time,  from  disappointed  affections  and 
thwarted  hopes,  made  the  office  of 
satirist  but  too  congenial  and  welcome 
to  his  spirit. 

His  coming  of  age  in  1809  was  cele- 
brated at  Newstead  by  such  festivals 
as  his  narrow  means  and  society  could 
furnish.  It  was  not  till  the  beginning 
of  this  year  that  he  took  his  satire  to 
London.  During  the  progress  of  this 
poem  through  the  press  he  increased 
its  length  by  more  than  a  hundred 
lines,  and  the  alterations  which  he 
constantly  made,  show  to  what  a  de- 
gree his  judgment  and  feelings  were 
affected  by  the  impressions  of  the  mo- 
ment. On  the  13th  of  March,  Lord 
Byron  took  his  seat  in  the  House  of 
Lords  ;  and  a  few  days  after,  the  "  Eng- 
lish Bards  and  Scotch  Reviewers" 
made  its  appearance.  This  satire  was 
issued  anonymously,  but  it  was  not 
long  before  the  name  of  the  author 
was  generally  known.  Lord  Byron, 
immediately  upon  its  publication,  had 
retired  into  the  country.  He  was  soon, 
however,  called  back  to  London  to 
superintend  a  new  edition,  in  conse- 
quence of  the  rapid  sale  of  the  first 
To  this  second  edition  he  made  con- 
siderable additions,  and  prefixed  his 


514 


LORD  BYKOK 


name.  He  now  made  up  his  mind 
to  leave  England  with  his  friend 
Mr.  Hobhouse,  early  in  the  following 
June,  for  an  extended  tour  in  Spain, 
and  the  East. 

Having  put  the  finishing  hand  to  his 
new  edition,  he  took  leave  of  London, 
on  the  llth  of  June,  and  in  about  a 
fortnight  after  sailed  for  Lisbon  in 
company  with  his  friend,  Mr.  Hob- 
house,  taking  with  him  his  valet, 
Fletcher,  Murray,  the  old  family  ser- 
vant, a  German  attendant,  and  a  boy 
named  Robert  Rushton,  who  is  intro- 
duced as  his  page,  in  the  First  Canto 
of  "  Childe  Harold."  From  Lisbon  he 
traveled  on  horseback  through  Portu- 
gal and  Spain,  visiting,  on  the  way, 
the  beautiful  scenes  of  Cintra  and  Ma- 
fra,  Seville  and  Cadiz,  and  thence  in  the 
"  Hyperion  "  frigate  to  Gibraltar.  His 
Betters  of  the  time  record,  in  a  most 
lively  manner,  the  adventures  which 
he  met  with  during  this  hasty  passage. 
The  dark -eyed  beauties  of  Andalusia 
appear  to  have  made  deep  impressions 
upon  the  heart  of  Byron,  to  judge 
from  the  frequent  allusions  in  his 
poems  of  this  period.  Having  made 
a  short  stay  at  Gibraltar,  on  the  15th 
of  August  he  sailed  for  Malta.  Here, 
through  some  trifling  misunderstand- 
ing, he  was  at  the  point  of  fighting  a 
duel  with  an  officer  of  the  garrison. 
Lord  Byron  was  on  the  ground  at  the 
time  appointed,  but,  through  some  mis- 
take in  the  arrangements,  his  adversary 
did  not  appear ;  but,  an  hour  after,  an 
officer  deputed  by  him  arrived,  and 
not  only  accounted  for  the  delay,  but 
made  every  explanation  with  respect  to 
the  supposed  offence  that  could  be  re- 
quired This  incident  is  interesting,  as 


showing  the  manly  courage  and  cool 
ness  of  Lord  Byron,  in  the  only  action 
of  the  kind  that  he  was  ever  engaged 
in.  The  route  which  he  now  took 
through  Albania,  and  other  parts  of 
Turkey,  may  be  traced,  by  those  who 
desire  the  details,  in  Mr.  Hobhouse's 
account  of  his  travels.  He  passed  from 
Prevesa/  where  he  landed,  through 
Acarnania  and  ^Etolia,  viewing  the 
famous  sites  of  Actium  and  Lepanto, 
and  the  classic  ground  of  Delphi  and 
Parnassus,  and  after  crossing  Mount 
Cithoeron,  he  arrived  at  Athens,  the 
city  of  his  dreams,  on  Christmas-day, 
1809.  Here  he  made  a  stay  of  be- 
tween two  and  three  months. 

On  the  5th  of  March,  the  travelers 
took  a  reluctant  leave  of  Athens,  and 
continued  their  journey  to  Smyrna, 
where,  with  the  exception  of  a  visit 
to  the  ruins  of  Ephesus,  they  remained 
for  about  a  month.  It  was  during  this 
time,  as  appears  from  a  memorandum 
of  his  own,  that  he  finished  the  first 
two  Cantos  of  "  Childe  Harold."  From 
Smyrna  he  sailed  up  the  Dardanelles 
to  Constantinople.  During  his  pass- 
age up  the  straits,  Lord  Byron  repeat- 
ed Leander's  famous  exploit  of  swim- 
ming across  the  Hellespont,  a  feat  to 
which  he  afterward  all  ades  in  his  let- 
ters. Another  year  w«,s  now  passed  in 
the  East,  at  Constantinople  and  Athens, 
and  among  the  islands  of  the  Archi- 
pelago ;  and  about  the  middle  of  July, 
1811,  we  find  him  again  in  England. 

He  had  no  sooner  arrived  in  England 
than  he  set  about  preparing  for  the 
press  some  of  the  poems  which  he  had 
written  while  abroad.  His  first  atten- 
tion was  given  to  a  paraphrase  of  the 
"  Ars  Poetica ''  of  Horace,  a  poc  m  hardly 


LOKD  BYEOIST. 


515 


worthy  of  his  genius,  but  which,  with 
that  strange  blindness  of  authors  to 
the  merits  of  their  own  works,  he  per- 
ferred  to  his  glorious  "  Childe  Harold." 
Happily,  the  better  judgment  of  his 
friends  averted  the  risk  to  his  reputa- 
tion which  would  have  been  the  conse- 
quence of  his  giving  this  poem  to  the 
press  at  this  time,  and  he  at  length 
consented  to  the  immediate  publication 
of  "  Ohilde  Harold,"  and  it  was  put  into 
the  hands  of  Mr.  Murray  for  that  pur- 
pose. 

While  thus  busily  engaged  in  his 
literary  projects,  he  was  called  away 
to  Newstead  by  the  intelligence  of  the 
illness  of  his  mother.  She  had  been 
indisposed  for  some  time,  but  not  to 
any  alarming  degree.  At  the  end  of 
July  her  illness  took  a  new  and  fatal 
turn;  and  so  strangely  characteristic 
was  the  close  of  the  poor  lady's  life, 
that  a  fit  of  rage,  brought  on,  it  is 
said,  by  reading  over  the  upholsterer's 
bills,  was  the  ultimate  cause  of  her 
death.  Although  Lord  Byron  started 
from  town  as  soon  as  he  heard  of  the 
attack,  he  was  too  late,  —  she  had 
breathed  her  last. 

"  Childe  Harold  "  was  not  ready  for 
publication  until  February  of  the  fol- 
lowing year.  A  few  days  previous  to 
its  appearance,  Lord  Byron  made  the 
first  trial  of  his  eloquence  in  the  House 
of  Lords.  The  subject  of  debate  was 
the  Nottingham  Frame-breaking  Bill. 
In  reference  to  his  parliamentary  dis- 
plays, he  says :  "  I  spoke  once  or  twice ; 
but  dissipation,  shyness,  haughty  and 
reserved  opinions,  together  with  the 
short  time  I  stayed  in  England,  pre- 
vented me  from  repeating  the  experi- 
ment :  as  far  as  I  went,  it  was  not  dis- 


couraging, particularly  my  first  speech 
(I  spoke  three  or  four  times  in  all), 
but  just  after  it  my  poem  of  "  Childe 
Harold"  was  published,  and  nobody 
ever  thought  of  my  prose  afterward, 
nor,  indeed,  did  I." 

.  Two  days  after  his  speech,  the  poenc 
appeared;  and  the  impression  which 
it  produced  upon  the  public  was  as  in- 
stantaneous as  it  proved  deep  and  last- 
ing— the  effect  was  electric;  his  fame 
had  not  to  wait  for  any  of  the  ordinary 
gradations,  but  seemed  to  spring  up, 
like  the  palace  in  the  fairy  tale,  in  a 
night.  As  he  himself  briefly  described 
it  in  his  memoranda : — "  I  awoke  one 
morning  and  found  myself  famous." 
The  first  edition  of  his  work  was  dis- 
posed of  instantly.  "  Lord  Byron " 
and  "  Childe  Harold "  became  the 
theme  of  every  tongue.  At  his  door 
most  of  the  leading  men  of  the  day 
presented  themselves;  from  morning 
till  night  the  most  flattering  testimo- 
nies of  success  crowded  his  table ;  he 
saw  the  whole  splendid  interior  of 
high  life  thrown  open  to  receive  him, 
and  found  himself  its  most  distinguish- 
ed object.  The  copyright  of  his  poem, 
which  was  purchased  by  Mr.  Murray 
for  £600,  he  presented  to  his  friend, 
Mr.  Dallas,  saying  that  "he  never 
would  receive  money  for  his  writings," 
a  resolution,  the  mixed  result  of  gen- 
erosity and  pride,  which  he  afterwards 
wisely  abandoned. 

Early  in  the  spring  of  1813,  he 
brought  out,  anonymously,  his  poem 
on  "Waltzing,"  and  in  the  month  of 
May  appeared  his  wild  and  beautiful 
"  Fragment,"  the  "  Giaour."  The  pub- 
lie  hailed  this  new  offspring  of  hia 
genius  with  wonder  and  delight,  This 


516 


LOKD    BYROK 


poem,  which  when  first  published  was 
contained  in  four  hundred  lines,  was 
increased  by  subsequent  additions  to 
fourteen  hundred.  The  plan,  indeed, 
which  he  had  adopted,  of  a  series  of 
fragments,  left  him  free  to  introduce, 
without  reference  to  more  than  the 
general  complexion  of  his  story,  what- 
ever sentiments  or  images  his  fancy,  in 
its  excursions,  could  collect.  This  was 
succeeded  by  the  "  Bride  of  Abydos," 
which  was  published  at  the  beginning 
of  December  of  the  same  year,  having 
been  struck  off,  like  its  predecessor,  in 
one  of  those  paroxysms  of  passion 
and  imagination,  which  adventures 
such  as  the  poet  was  now  engaged  in 
were,  in  a  temperament  like  his,  calcu- 
lated to  excite. 

About  a  year  before,  Lord  Byron 
had  been  induced  to  turn  his  thoughts 
seriously  to  marriage,  at  least  as  seri- 
ously as  his  thoughts  were  ever  capa- 
ble of  being  so  turned, — and,  chiefly 
by  the  advice  and  intervention  of  his 
friend,  Lady  Melbourne,  to  become  a 
suitor  for  the  hand  of  a  relation  of  that 
lady,  Miss  Milbanke.  Though  his 
proposal  was  not  then  accepted,  every 
assurance  of  friendship  and  regard  ac- 
companied the  refusal;  a  wish  was 
even  expressed  that  they  should  con- 
tinue to  write  to  each  other,  and  a  cor- 
respondence ensued  between  them. 

His  own  account  of  the  circum- 
stances which  led  to  his  second  propo- 
sal for  Miss  Milbanke,  is,  in  substance 
as  follows:  A  person,  who  had  for 
some  time  stood  high  in  his  "affection 
and  confidence,  observing  how  cheer- 
less and  unsettled  was  the  state  both 
of  his  mind  and  prospects,  advised 
him  strenuousl}  to  marry;  and,  after 


much  discussion,  he  consented.     Thb 
next  point  for  consideration  was,  who 
was   to  be  the  object  of   his  choice; 
and  while  his  friend  mentioned  one 
lady,    he    himself    named    Miss    Mil 
banke.     To  this,  however,  his  adviser 
strongly  objected,  as  Miss   Milbanke 
had  at  present  no  fortune,  and  that  his 
own    embarrassed    affairs   would   not 
permit  him  to  marry  without  one,  and 
that  she  would  not  at  all  suit  him.   In 
consequence  of  these  representations, 
he  agreed  that  his  friend  should  write 
a  proposal  for  him  to  the  other  lady 
name.d,  which  was  accordingly  done ; — 
and  an  answer  containing  a  refusal,  ar- 
rived, as  they  were,  one  morning,  sit- 
ting together.     "You  see,"  said  Lord 
Byron,  "  that  after  all,  Miss  Milbanke 
is  to  be  the  person ; — I  will  write  to 
her."     He  accordingly  wrote   on   the 
moment,  and  a  few  days  after  he  re- 
ceived a  very  flattering  acceptance  of 
his  offer.     The  die  was  cast  now,  and 
he  had  no  alternative  but  to  proceed. 
Accordingly,  at  the  end  of  December, 
accompanied  by  his  friend,  Mr.  Hob- 
house,  he  set  out  for  Seaham,  the  resi- 
dence of  Sir  Kalph  Milbanke,  the  lady's 
father,  in  the  county  of  Durham ;  and 
on  the  2d  of  January,  1815,  he  was 
married. 

After  the  wedding,  Lord  Byron  re- 
sided with  his  wife  for  some  time  at 
Seaham,  but  he  soon  wearied  of  the 
monotony  of  country  life ;  and  to- 
wards the  end  of  March,  he  returned 
to  London,  where,  on  the  10th  of  De- 
cember of  the  same  year,  his  daughter 
Augusta  Ada,  was  born.  The  strong 
and  affectionate  terms  in  which,  after 
his  marriage,  he  had  in  some  of  his 

O      f 

letters    declared    his    own   happiness 


LOKD  BYRON. 


tended  to  still  those  apprehensions 
which  the  first  view  of  his  alliance 
gave  rise  to.  These  indications  of  a 
contented  heart,  however,  soon  ceased. 
His  mention  of  the  partner  of  his 
home  became  rare  and  formal ;  and  a 
feeling  of  unquiet  and  weariness  ap- 
peared, which  brought  back  all  the 
worst  anticipations  of  his  fate. 

About  a  month  after  the  birth  of 
her  child,  Lady  Byron  most  unexpect- 
edly adopted  the  resolution  of  sepa- 
rating from  her  husband.  She  had 
left  London  at  the  latter  end  of  Janu- 
ary, on  a  visit  to  her  father's  house,  in 
Leicestershire,  and  Lord  Byron  was,  a 
short  time  after,  to  accompany  her. 
They  ha'd  parted  in  the  utmost  kind- 
ness,— she  wrote  him  a  letter,  full  of 
playfulness  and  affection,  on  the  road ; 
and  immediately  on  her  arrival  at 
Kirkby  Mallory,  her  father  wrote  to 
acquaint  Lord  Byron  that  she  would 
return  to  him  no  more.  At  the  mo- 
ment when  he  had  to  stand  this  unex- 
pected shock,  his  pecuniary  embarrass- 
ments, which  had  been  fast  gathering 
around  him  during  the  whole  of  the  last 
year,  (there  having  been  no  less  than 
eight  or  nine  executions  in  his  house 
within  that  period,)  had  arrived  at 
their  climax ;  and  at  a  moment,  when, 
to  use  his  own  expression,  he  "was 
standing  alone  on  his  hearth,  with  his 
household  gods  shivered  around  him," 
he  was  doomed  to  receive  the  startling 
intelligence  that  the  wife  who  had  just 
parted  with  him  in  kindness  had  part- 
ed with  him — forever ! 

The  poet  now  determined  to  leave 
England  for  a  tour  through  Swit- 
zerland, the  Netherlands,  and  Italy. 
his  early  travel  in  the  East,  his 


thoughts  had  often  fondly  reverted  to 
those  southern  lands  which  had  so 
powerfully  impressed  his  imagination 
and  he  now  turned  away  without  re 
gret  from  the  country  which  had  given 
him  up,  and  the  friends  who  had  for- 
saken him.  During  the  month  of  Janu- 
ary and  part  of  February,  his  poems 
of  the  « Siege  of  Corinth"  and  "Pa- 
risina,"  were  in  the  hands  of  the  prin- 
ters, and  about  the  end  of  the  latter 
month,  they  made  their  appearance. 
Although  Lord  Byron  was  in  the  most 
embarrassed  circumstances,  and  hi? 
creditors,  animated  by  the  general  out- 
cry, were  pressing  their  claims  with 
more  severity  than  ever,  he  still  re- 
fused to  accept  any  compensation  for 
his  works.  It  was  under  these  disas- 
trous and  almost  humiliating  circum- 
stances that  Lord  Byron  took  his  final 
leave  of  England.  On  the  25th  of 
April  he  sailed  for  Ostend,  accom- 
panied by  Dr.  Polidori,  two  foreign 
servants,  and  William  Fletcher  and 
Robert  Rushton,  the  same  "  yeoman  " 
and  "  page  "  who  had  set  out  with  him 
in  his  youthful  travels  in  1809. 

The  course  which  he  now  pursued 
through  Flanders,  and  by  the  Rhine, 
may  best  be  traced  in  his  own  match- 
less verses  in  the  Third  Canto  of 
"Childe  Harold."  At  Geneva,  he 
took  up  his  residence  at  the  Hotel 
Lecheron,  on  the  banks  of  the  lake. 
Here  he  first  made  the  acquaintance 
of  Shelley  and  his  wife,  who  were 
living  in  the  same  hotel.  The  con- 
stant intercourse  of  the  poets,  thus 
thrown  together,  produced  an  inti- 
macy between  them  which  lasted  with 
unabated  warmth  until  the  death  of 
Shelley.  The  opinions  and  theories  oi 


518 


LOED  BYRON. 


bis  new  companion  were  not  without 
their  influence  upon  the  impression- 
able mind  of  Lord  Byron,  and  among 
those  fine  bursts  of  passion  and  de- 
scription which  abound  in  his  later 
poetry,  may  be  discovered  traces  of 
that  mysticism  of  meaning — that  sub- 
limity losing  itself  in  vagueness,  which 
characterized  the  writings  of  his  extra- 
ordinary friend.  After  a  stay  of  a  few 
weeks  at  this  place,  he  removed  to  a 
villa  in  the  neighborhood,  called  Dio- 
dati,  very  beautifully  situated  on  the 
high  banks  of  the  lake,  where  he  es- 
tablished his  residence  for  the  remain- 
der of  the  summer.  The  effect  of  the 
late  struggle  upon  his  mind,  in  stirring 
up  all  its  resources  and  energies,  was 
visible  in  the  great  activity  of  his 
genius  during  the  whole  of  this  period, 
and  the  rich  variety,  both  in  character 
and  coloring,  of  the  works  with  which 
it  teemed.  Besides  the  Third  Canto, 
and  the  "  Prisoner  of  Chillon,"  he  pro- 
duced also  his  two  poems,  "  Darkness  " 
and  "  The  Dream,"  the  latter  of  which 
must  have  cost  him  many  a  tear  in 
writing,  being,  indeed,  the  most  mourn- 
ful, as  well  as  picturesque  "  story  of  a 
wandering  life,"  that  ever  came  from 
the  pen  and  heart  of  man, 

Soon  afterward,  upon  the  arrival  of 
his  friends,  Mr.  Hobhouse  and  Mr.  S. 
Davies,  he  set  out  with  the  former  on 
a  tour  through  the  Bernese  Alps.  He 
has  left  a  journal  of  this  excursion,  in 
which  he  records,  in  hasty  memoranda, 
the  first  impressions  produced  upon 
his  mind  by  the  magnificent  scenery 
through  which  he  traveled ;  and  it  is 
interesting  to  trace  in  these  careless 
notes,  the  germs  of  his  most  splendid 
imagery  in  "Manfred"  and  "Childe 


Harold."  After  accomplishing  this 
journey,  about  the  beginning  of  Octo- 
ber, he  took  his  departure  for  Italy. 
After  a  month  spent  at  various  places 
on  the  way,  chiefly  at  Milan  and  Ve- 
rona, he  reached  Venice,  where  he  in- 
tended to  reside  for  the  winter.  All 
the  restraint  of  popular  opinion  being 
now  removed ;  and  rendered  desperate 
and  careless  of  his  reputation  by  the 
constant  recollection  that  he  was  an 
outcast  from  his  native  land,  Lord  By- 
ron plunged  into  all  the  disipations 
which  were  offered  to  him  in  the  li 
centious  society  and  easy  morals  of 
an  Italian  city.  During  -  this  time, 
however,  his  literary  occupations  were 
not  entirely  neglected  ;  he  finished  his 
extraordinary  creation  of  "  Manfred," 
and  wrote  several  smaller  pieces.  He 
usually  devoted  part  of  the  morning 
to  the  study  of  Armenian,  at  the  con- 
vent of  the  Armenian  monks  on  one 
of  the  islands  of  the  lagoon.  In  this 
language  he  does  not  seem  to  have  at- 
tained much  proficiency,  although  he 
took  some  part  in  the  translation  of  an 
Epistle  of  St.  Paul,  not  generally  con- 
sidered genuine,  which  had  been  pre- 
served in  the  Armenian  writings.  The 
irregular  course  of  life  which  he  had 
adopted,  soon  showed  its  effect  upon 
his  health,  and  in  a  few  months  he  was 
attacked  with  a  low  fever,  which  left 
him  quite  weak.  In  order  to  escape 
the  unhealthy  season  at  Venice,  and  to 
recruit  his  constitution  by  a  change  to 
the  purer  and  more  wholesome  air  of 
the  main  land,  he  removed  for  the  sum- 
mer  to  a  villa  at  La  Mira,  on  the 
Brenta,  not  far  from  the  city. 

Some  time  before  this,  Lord  Byron 
had  made  a  hurried  trip  to  Florence 


LORD  BYROK 


519 


and  Rome,  which  was  sufficient,  how- 
ever, to  store  his  mind  with  the  vivid 
impressions  of  these  famous  cities,  and 
their  treasures  of  art  and  antiquity, 
which  enrich  his  poems.  In  fact,  so 
far  from  the  powers  of  his  intellect  be- 
ing weakened  by  his  irregularities,  he 
was,  perhaps,  at  no  time  of  life  so  ac- 
tively in  the  full  possession  of  his  en- 
ergies, for  it  was  at  this  time  that  he 
produced  the  fourth  and  last  canto  of 
"  Childe  Harold,"  which  was  consider- 
ed even  to  surpass  its  predecessors. 
About  this  period,  his  humorous  story 
of  "  Beppo,"  descriptive  of  Italian  life, 
was  also  published. 

Lord  Byron  in  one  of  his  letters  re- 
marks, that  the  ancient  beauty  of  the 
Venetian  women  had  deserted  the 
"  dame  "  or  higher  orders,  and  that  the 
faces  which  adorn  the  canvass  of  Titian 
and  Giorgione  were  now  only  to  be 
found  under  the  "fazziole,"  or  ker- 
chiefs of  the  lower.  It  was  unluckily 
among  these  latter  specimens  of  the 
"  bel  sangue "  of  Venice,  that  he  was 
now,  by  a  sudden  descent  in  the  scale 
of  refinement,  to  select  the  companions 
of  his  disengaged  hours.  A  proof, 
however,  that  in  this  short  and  despe- 
rate career  of  libertinism,  he  was  only 
seeking  relief  for  a  wronged  and  mor- 
tified spirit,  is  that,  sometimes,  when 
his  house  was  in  possession  of  such  vis- 
itants, he  would  hurry  away  in  his  gon- 
dola, and  pass  the  greater  part  of  the 
night  upon  the  water,  as  if  hating  to 
return  home.  It  is,  indeed,  certain 
that  he  always  looked  back  to  this  pe- 
riod of  his  life  with  self-reproach ;  and 
the  excesses  to  which  he  had  there 
abandoned  himself,  were  among  the 
prominent  causes  of  the  detestation 


which  he  afterwards  felt  for  Venice. 
It  was  while  these  different  feelings 
were  struggling  in  his  breast,  that  he 
conceived  and  began  his  poem  of  "  Don 
Juan ;"  and  never  did  pages  more  faith- 
fully represent  every  variety  of  emo- 
,tion,  and  whim,  and  passion,  that,  like 
the  rack  of  autumn,  swept  across  the 
author's  mind  in  writing  them.  The 
cool  shrewdness  of  age,  with  the  vivaci- 
ty and  glowing  temperament  of  youth — 
the  wit  of  a  Voltaire,  with  the  sensibil- 
ity of  a  Rousseau — the  minute  practi 
cal  knowledge  of  a  man  of  society, 
with  the  abstract  and  self-contempla- 
tive spirit  of  a  poet — a  susceptibility 
of  all  that  is  grandest  and  most  affect- 
ing in  human  virtue,  with  a  deep, 
withering  experience  of  all  that  is  most 
fatal  to  it — the  two  extremes  in  short, 
of  man's  wild  and  inconsistent  nature; 
such  was  the  strange  assemblage  of 
contrary  elements  all  meeting  in  the 
same  mind,  and  all  brought  to  bear, 
in  turn,  upon  the  same  task,  from  which 
alone  could  have  sprung  this  extraor- 
dinary poem, — the  most  powerful  in 
many  respects,  the  most  painful  dis- 
play of  the  versatility  of  genius  that 
has  ever  been  left  for  succeeding  agea 
to  wonder  at  and  deplore. 

It  was  about  the  time  that  a  full 
consciousness  of  the  evils  of  this  course 
of  life  broke  upon  him,  that  an  attach 
ment,  differing  altogether,  both  in  du- 
ration and  intensity,  from  any  of  those 
that,  since  the  dreams  of  his  boyhood 
had  inspired  him,  gained  an  influence 
over  his  mind  which  lasted  through 
his  few  remaining  years ;  and,  undenia- 
bly wrong  and  immoral,  even  from  an 
Italian  point  of  view,  as  was  the  na 
ture  of  this  wnnection,  we  can  hardlj 


520 


LOKD  BYRON. 


perhaps — taking  into  account  the  far 
worse  wrong  from  which  it  rescued 
him — consider  it  otherwise  than  fortu- 
nate. The  fair  object  of  this  last  love 
was  a  young  Romagnese  lady,  the 
Countess  Guiccioli,  the  daughter  of 
Count  Gamba,  of  Kavenna.  Her  hus- 
band had,  in  early  life,  been  the  friend 
of  Alfieri,  and  had  distinguished  him- 
self in  the  promotion  of  a  national 
theatre,  in  which  cause  he  joined  his 
own  wealth  to  the  talents  of  the  poet. 
Notwithstanding  his  age,  and  a  char- 
acter by  no  means  reputable,  his  opu- 
lence made  him  a  prize  which  all  the 
mothers  of  Ravenna  strove  to  secure 
for  their  daughters,  and  the  young  and 
beautiful  Teresa  Gamba,  just  emanci- 
pated from  a  convent  and  only  eight- 
een, was  the  selected  victim.  The 
first  time  that  Lord  Byron  met  this 
lady  was  at  the  house  of  the  Countess 
Albrizzi,  in  the  autumn  of  1818.  No 
acquaintance,  at  this  time,  ensued  be- 
tween them,  and  it  was  not  till  the 
following  spring  that  they  were  intro- 
duced to  each  other.  The  love  that 
sprang  up  at  this  interview  was  instan- 
taneous and  mutual.  "From  that  eve- 
ning," she  says,  "we  met  every  day  as 
long  as  I  remained  at  Venice."  About 
the  middle  of  April  the  Countess  was 
obliged  to  quit  Venice  with  her  hus- 
band, for  Ravenna.  From  every  place 
on  the  road  she  wrote  letters  to  her 
lover,  expressing  in  the  most  passion- 
ate and  pathetic  terms  her  despair  at 
leaving  him.  So  great  was  her  afflic- 
tion that  it  produced  a  dangerous  ill- 
ness, which,  by  the  time  that  she  reach- 
ed the  end  of  her  journey,  had  assumed 
such  an  alarming  aspect  that  her  life 
was  despaired  of.  The  timely  arrival 


of  Lord  Byroa  at  Ravenna  had,  how 
ever,  a  most  favorable  effect ;  and  she 
was  soon  sufficiently  recovered  to  go  to 
Bologna,  whither  he  accompanied  her 
The  state  of  her  health  before  long, 
however,  obliged  her  to  return  to  Ve- 
nice ;  her  husband,  being  unable  to  go 
with  her,  consented  that  Lord  By- 
ron should  be  the  companion  of  her 
journey.  The  air  of  the  city  not 
agreeing  with  the  countess,  they  short- 
ly afterward  took  up  their  residence 
at  a  villa  on  the  Brenta.  This  arrange- 
ment, as  might  be  expected,  hardly 
pleased  the  count,  her  husband  ;  and 
in  the  winter  he  returned^  to  Venice 
to  claim  his  absent  spouse.  He  imme- 
diately insisted  that  his  lady  should 
return  with  him,  and  after  some  nego- 
tiations she  reluctantly  consented  to 
accompany  her  lord. 

Lord  Byron  now  turned  his  thoughts 
towards  England.  For  some  time  he  had 
contemplated  a  visit  to  his  native  land 
to  attend  to  his  affairs  at  home;  and 
now  he  had  at  last,  though  unwillingly, 
resolved  upon  the  journey,  and  fixed 
the  time  for  his  departure,  when  the 
tidings  reached  him  that  the  countess 
was  again  alarmingly  ill  at  Ravenna. 
Her  sorrow  at  their  separation  had  so 
preyed  upon  her  mind,  that  even  her 
own  family,  and  her  husband,  fearful 
of  the  consequences,  had  withdrawn 
all  opposition  to  her  wishes,  and  en- 
treated her  lover  to  hasten  to  her  side. 
Lord  Byron,  only  too  glad  oi  any  ex- 
cuse for  abandoning  his  journey,  and 
eager  to  return  to  the  woman  for  whom 
he  felt  the  deepest  passion  that  had, 
since  his  boyhood,  animated  his  exist 
ence,  and  who  had  shown  such  a  de- 
voted attachment  to  him,  more  touch 


LORD  BYRON. 


521 


ing  amid  the  coldness  and  ingratitude 
that  he  had  lately  met  with,  lost  no 
time  in  responding  to  the  summons. 
His  presence,  as  before,  revived  her 
sinking  health.  He  now  transferred 
his  wandering  household  to  Ravenna, 
when  he  fell  into  his  usual  routine  of 
daily  employments :  riding  in  the  pine 
forest  celebrated  by  Boccaccio  in  the 
afternoon,  and  passing  his  evenings  in 
the  company  of  his  inamorata,  or  go- 
ing occasionally  into  the  society  of  the 
place.  At  this  time,  all  connection 
with  his  own  countrymen,  except  by 
correspondence,  had  almost  entirely 
ceased.  There  were  no  resident  Eng- 
lish at  Ravenna,  and  travelers  seldom 
came  there,  and  never  stayed  long.  He 
was  surrounded  by  a  retinue  of  Italian 
servants,  and  the  only  person  that  he 
ever  saw  who  spoke  his  native  tongue, 
was  his  valec  Fletcher,  and  he,  he  says, 
spoke  Nottinghamshire  dialect.  At 
that  time  the  state  of  Italy  was  very 
much  disturbed  by  the  talk  of  revolu- 
tions and  secret  leagues  against  the  ex- 
isting foreign  government.  Lord  By- 
ron, as  it  appears  from  many  allusions 
in  his  letters,  took  a  warm  interest,  if 
not  a  more  active  part,  in  these  move- 
ments. 

Before  long,  these  agitations  excited 
so  much  alarm  in  the  hearts  of  the 
rulers  of  Italy,  that  they  issued  a  sen- 
tence of  proscription  and  banishment 
against  all  those  whom  they  supposed 
had  in  the  remotest  degree  contributed 
to  them.  The  two  Gambas,  the  father 
and  brother  of  the  Countess  Guiccioli, 
were,  of  course,  as  suspected  chiefs  of 
the  Carbonari  of  Romagna,  included. 
About  the  middle  of  July,  the  Count- 
ess wrote  to  inform  Lord  Byron  that 
66 


her  father,  in  whose  palazzo  she  wa 
now  residing,  and  her  brother,  had 
just  been  ordered  to  quit  Ravenna 
within  twenty-four  hours.  She  her- 
self  found,  a  few  days  after,  that  she 
must  also  join  the  crowd  of  exiles. 
Lord  Byron  himself  had  become  an 
object  of  strong  suspicion  to  the  gov- 
ernment ;  but,  not  daring  to  attack  him 
directly,  they  hoped  that  by  driving 
his  Mends  away,  he  would  be  induced 
to  share  their  banishment.  The  de- 
sired result  was  obtained ;  for,  a  short 
time  afterward,  he  joined  them  at  Pisa, 
in  Tuscany,  which  place  they  had 
agreed  upon  for  the  winter.  In  his 
journey  to  this  place,  he  met  at  Bo- 
logna, by  a  previous  appointment,  the 
poet  Rogers,  who  has  introduced  the 
circumstance  in  his  "  Italy." 

Upon  his  arrival  at  Pisa,  Lord  By- 
ron took  up  his  residence  in  a  famous 
old  feudal  palazzo  on  the  Arno,  the 
Lanfranchi  Palace.  Soon  after  his 
removal  from  Ravenna,  he  received 
the  sad  intelligence  that  his  natural 
daughter,  Allegra  Byron,  whom  he 
had  left  at  the  convent  of  Bagna  Ca- 
vallo  for  the  care  of  her  education, 
was  dead.  The  blow  was  a  heavy 
one,  but  after  the  first  violent  burst 
of  grief,  he  bore  up  against  it  with  a 
firmness  and  composure  unusual  to  his 
temperament.  While  he  was  at  Pisa, 
a  serious  affray  occurred,  in  which  he 
was  personally  concerned.  Lord  By-, 
ron,  with  some  of  his  friends,  was  rid- 
ing near  the  gates  of  the  city,  when  a 
dragoon,  whom  he  mistook  for  an  offi- 
cer, but  who  afterward  turned  out  to 
be  only  a  sergeant-major,  called  upon 
the  guard  to  arrest  them.  Lord  Byron 
and  another,  an  Italian,  rode  through 


522 


LORD   BYBON. 


the  guard,  without  heeding  them,  bat 
they  detained  the  rest.  He  then  rode 
home,  and  sent  his  secretary  to  give  an 
account  of  the  affair  to  the  government 
and  procure  their  release.  Upon  re- 
turning to  the  spot,  he  met  the  same 
dragoon,  and  had  some  words,  with 
him,  and  supposing  him  to  be  a  gen- 
tleman, asked  him  his  name  and  ad- 
dress. As  the  dragoon  was  riding 
away,  he  was  stabbed  and  dangerous- 
ly wounded  by  one  of  Lord  Byron's 
servants,  wholly,  however,  without 
his  direction  or  approval.  The  conse- 
quence of  this  rencontre  was,  that  the 
two  Gambas  and  Lord  Byron's  ser- 
vants were  banished  from  Pisa.  He 
himself  was  advised  to  leave  it.  As 
the  Countess  went  with  her  father,  he 
a  short  time  after  joined  them  at  Leg- 
horn, and  spent  six  w^eeks  at  Monte- 
nero,  in  the  neighborhood.  His  return 
to  Pisa  was  occasioned  by  a  new  prose- 
cution of  the  family  of  the  Gambas. 
They  were  commanded  to  leave  the 
Tuscan  states  in  four  days.  After 
their  departure,  the  Countess  Guiccioli 
and  Lord  Byron  returned  to  the  Lan- 
franchi  Palace. 

During  all  this  time  he  had  not  been 
idle  with  his  pen.  "  The  Prophecy  of 
Dante,"  "  Sardanapalus,"  a  tragedy ; 
"  Heaven  and  Earth,"  a  mystery ;  and 
"Cain,"  a  mystery,  were  written  at 
Ravenna.  The  last  production  called 
forth  the  severest  denunciations,  for 
what  appeared  to  be  its  impiety  in 
questioning  the  benevolence  of  Provi- 
dence. From  this  the  author  defended 
himself  on  the  ground  that  it  was 
strictly  a  dramatic  work;  that  if  it 
was  blasphemous,  so  also  must  be 
Milton's  "  Paradise  Lost,"  with  Satan's 


"Evil,  be  thou  my  good."  At  Pisa 
he  wrote,  however,  a  tragedy,  "  The 
Deformed  Transformed,"  and  contin- 
ued "  Don  Juan  "  through  the  Seven- 
teenth Canto. 

We  now  come  to  a  period  in  Byron's 
career  when  a  new  start  was  to  be  taken 
by  his  daring  spirit,  and  a  course,  glori- 
ous as  it  was  brief  and  fatal,  entered 
upon.  At  the  beginning  of  the  month 
of  April,  1823,  Lord  Byron  received  a 
visit  from  Mr.  Blaquiere,  the  agent  of 
the  Greek  Committee,  in  England.  He 
had  been  directed  to  stop  at  Genoa 
and  communicate  with  Lord  Byron,  as 
it  was  thought  that  he  might  feel  in 
clined  to  aid  the  revolutionists.  In 
this  way,  Lord  Byron's  active  partici 
pation  in  the  struggle  began,  and  he 
found  himself,  almost  before  he  had 
time  to  form  a  decision,  or  well  knew 
what  he  had  undertaken,  obliged  to 
set  out  for  Greece.  The  preparations 
for  his  departure  were  now  hastened. 
All  was  soon  ready,  and  on  the  13th 
day  of  July,  he  slept  on  board  the 
Hercules,  an  English  brig,  which  had 
been  taken  to  convey  him  to  the  East. 
His  suite,  at  this  time,  consisted  of 
Count  Gamba,  Mr.  Trelawney,  Dr. 
Bruno,  and  eight  domestics.  About 
sunrise  the  next  morning  they  suc- 
ceeded in  clearing  the  port,  but  after 
remaining  in  sight  of  Genoa  the  whole 
day,  they  were  obliged,  by  adverse 
winds,  to  return.  This  incident  was 
regarded  by  Byron  as  a  bad  omen,  and 
tended  still  more  to  depress  his  spirits. 
When,  however,  they  had  fairly  got  to 
sea  on  the  next  day,  and  he  was  wholly 
disengaged,  as  it  were,  from  his  formei 
existence,  the  natural  power  of  his 
spirit  shook  off  this  despondency,  and 


LOKD   BYRON. 


523 


the  light  and  life  of  his  better  nature 
again  shone  forth.  After  a  passage  of 
five  days  they  reached  Leghorn,  where 
they  were  to  stop  to  take  in  a  supply 
of  powder  and  other  English  goods, 
not  to  be  had  elsewhere.  On  the  24th 
of  July,  after  a  most  favorable  voyage, 
they  cast  anchor  at  Agostoli,  the  chief 
port  of  Cephalonia.  It  had  been 
thought  prudent  that  Lord  Byron 
should  first  direct  his  course  to  one  of 
the  Ionian  islands,  from  whence,  as  a 
post  of  observation,  he  should  be  able 
to  ascertain  the  exact  position  of  affairs 
on  the  mainland.  With  this  view  he 
determined  not  to  land  at  Agostoli, 
but  to  await  on  board  of  his  vessel 
further  information  from  the  grovern- 

o 

ment  of  Greece.  While  awaiting  the 
return  of  his  messengers,  he  employed 
his  time  in  a  visit  to  the  neighboring 
island  of  Ithaca.  Unchanged  since 
his  early  travels,  he  still  preferred  the 
wild  charms  of  nature  to  the  classic  as- 
sociations of  art  and  story,  although 
he  viewed  with  much  interest  those 
places  which  tradition  had  sanctified. 
The  benevolence,  which  was  one  of  the 
chief  motives  of  his  present  course, 
had  opportunities  of  showing  itself, 
even  during  his  short  stay  in  Ithaca. 
On  hearing  that  a  number  of  destitute 
families  had  fled  thither  for  refuge 
from  Scio,  Patras,  and  other  parts  of 
Greece,  he  sent  to  the  commandant 
three  thousand  piastres  for  their  relief. 
Upon  Lord  Byron's  return  to  Cepha- 
lonia, a  messenger  brought  him  a  let- 
ter from  Marco  Botzari,  one  of  the 
chiefs  of  the  insurrection  in  Western 
Greece.  He  hailed  his  arrival  with 
enthusiasm,  and  thanked  him  for  the 
aid  which  he  had  already  given  to  the 


cause,  in  arming  forty  Suliotes,  and 
sending  them  to  assist  in  the  relief  of 
Missolonghi,  at  that  time  besieged  by 
the  Turks.  This  letter  preceded,  only 
by  a  few  hours,  the  death  of  the  writer. 
The  same  night  he  led  his  band  into 
the  midst  of  the  Turkish  camp,  and  fell 
at  last  close  to  the  tent  of  the  Pacha 
himself.  This  glorious  enterprise 
checked,  but  did  not  prevent  the  ad- 
vance  of  the  Turks.  After  the  battle, 
Lord  Byron  transmitted  bandages  and 
medicines,  of  which  he  had  a  large 
supply,  and  also  pecuniary  assistance 
to  the  wounded. 

Aware  that,  to  judge  deliberately  of 
parties,  he  must  keep  out  of  their 
vortex,  and  warned  of  the  risk  he 
should  run  by  connecting  himself  with 
any,  he  resolved  to  remain  for  some 
time  longer  at  Cephalonia.  During 
the  six  weeks  that  he  had  been  here, 
he  had  been  living  in  the  most  com- 
fortless manner,  on  board  the  vessel 
which  brought  him.  Having  made  up 
his  mind  to  prolong  his  stay,  he 
decided  upon  fixing  his  residence  on 
shore,  and  he  retired,  for  the  sake  of 
privacy,  to  a  small  village  called 
Metaxata,  about  seven  miles  from 
Agostoli. 

Before  his  removal  he  despatched 
Mr.  Trelawney  and  Mr.  Hamilton 
Browne  with  a  letter  to  the  existing 
government,  explaining  his  own  views 
and  those  of  the  committee  whom  lie 
represented ;  and  it  was  not  till  a 
month  after,  that  intelligence  from 
these  gentlemen  reached  him.  The 
picture  they  gave  of  the  state  of  the 
country  was  confirmatory  of  what  has 
already  been  described,  —  incapacity 
and  selfishness  at  the  head  of  affaiyi, 


LORD   BYRON. 


disorganisation  throughout  the  body 
politic ;  but  still,  with  all  this,  the  heart 
of  the  nation  sound,  and  bent  on  resis- 
tance. His  lordship's  agents  had  been 
received  with  all  due  welcome  by  the 
government,  who  were  most  anxious 
that  he  should  set  out  for  the  Morea 
without  delay ;  and  pressing  letters  to 
this  purport  were  sent  to  him,  both 
from  the  legislative  and  executive 
bodies. 

Here,  in  his  retirement,  while  await- 
ing more  positive  assurances  to  direct 
his  movements,  conflicting  calls  were 

'  O 

reaching  him  from  all  the  various  scenes 
of  action ,  Metaxa,  at  Missolonghi,  en- 
treated him  to  hasten  to  the  relief  of 
that  place,  which  the  Turks  were  now 
blockading  by  sea  and  land  ;  the  head 
of  the  military  chiefs,  Colcotroni,  was 
no  less  urgent  that  he  should  present 
himself  at  the  approaching  congress  of 
Salamis,  where,  under  the  dictation  of 
these  rude  warriors,  the  affairs  of  the 
conn  try  were  to  be  settled ;  while  from 
another  quarter,  the  great  opponent  of 
these  chieftains,  Mavrocordato,  was, 
with  more  urgency,  as  well  as  more 
ability  than  any,  endeavoring  to 
impress  upon  him  his  own  views,  and 
imploring  his  presence  at  Hydra, 
whither  he  had  been  forced  to  retire. 
Byron  listened  with  equal  attention  to 
all  these  conflicting  appeals,  and,  not 
committing  himself  to  any  party,  strove 
in  his  own  way  to  discover  the  truth, 
and  to  form  his  judgment  from  it. 

Besides  the  aid  which  he  had  already 
afforded  to  the  Greeks,  in  many  differ- 
ent ways,  Lord  Byron  assisted  the 
government  by  the  loan  of  large  sums 
of  money,  to  raise  which  he  sold  his 
manor  of  Rochdale,  and  drew  large- 


ly upon  his  income   for   the   ensuing 
year. 

The  Grecian  squadron,  which  had 
been  long  expected  at  Missolonghi, 
had  now  arrived,  and  Mavrocordato, 
the  only  leader  worthy  of  the  name  of 
statesman,  having  been  appointed  to 
organize  Western  Greece,  the  time  for 
Lord  Byron's  presence  on  the  scene  of 
action  seemed  to  have  arrived,  and  he 
set  about  preparing  for  his  departure. 
His  friends  endeavored  to  dissuade 
him  from  fixing  on  such  an  unhealthy 
spot  as  Missolonghi  for  his  residence, 
but  his  mind  was  made  up, — the  prox- 
imity of  the  port  in  some  degree 
tempting  him, — and  having  hired  for 
himself  and  suite  a  light  fast-sailing 
vessel,  with  a  boat  for  part  of  his 
baggage,  and  a  larger  vessel  for  the 
horses,  etc.,  he  was  on  the  26th  of 
December  ready  to  sail.  This  short 
voyage  was  not  without  its  accidents. 
Several  hours  before  daybreak,  while 
waiting  for  the  other  party  to  come  up, 
Lord  Byron  found  himself  close  under 
the  stern  of  a  large  vessel,  which  was 
soon  found  to  be  a  Turkish  frigate. 
By  good  fortune,  they  were  mistaken 
for  a  Greek  fire-ship  by  the  Turks, 
who  therefore  feared  to  fire,  but 
with  loud  shouts  frequently  hailed 
them.  By  maintaining  perfect  silence, 
and  under  cover  of  the  darkness,  Lord 
Byron's  vessel  was  enabled  to  get 
away  safely ;  and  took  shelter  among 
the  Scrofes,  a  cluster  of  rocks  but  a 
few  hours'  sail  from  Missolonghi. 
Finding  his  position  here  untenable  in 
case  of  an  attack,  he  thought  it  right 
to  venture  out  again,  and  making  all 
sail,  got  safe  to  Dragomestina,  a  small 
sea-port  town  on  the  coast  of  Acarnania 


LOKD  BYRON. 


525 


The  other  boat,  with  Count  Gamba  on 
board,  was  not  so  fortunate,  having 
been  brought  to  by  the  Turkish  frigate 
and  carried  into  Patras,  where  the 
commander  of  the  squadron  was  sta- 
tioned. Here  after  an  interview  with 
th3  Pacha,  by  whom  he  wras  treated 
most  courteously,  during  his  detention 
he  had  the  good  fortune  to  procure  the 
release  of  his  vessel  and  freight,  and 
on  the  4th  of  January  he  arrived  at 
Missolonghi,  where,  on  the  next  day, 
he  was  joined  by  Lord  Byron,  who  was 
received  by  the  garrison  and  the  in- 
habitants with  the  greatest  demon- 
strations of  enthusiasm.  The  whole 
population  of  the  place  crowded  to  the 
shore  to  welcome  him;  the  ships 
anchored  off  the  fortress  fired  a  salute 
as  he  passed,  and  all  the  troops  and 
dignitaries  of  the  place,  with  Prince 
Mavrocordato  at  their  head,  met  him 
on  his  landing,  and  accompanied  him, 
amid  the  mingled  din  of  shouts,  wild 
music,  and  discharges  of  artillery,  to  the 
house  that  had  been  prepared  for  him. 
An  expedition  against  Lepanto,  a 
fortified  town  on  the  gulf  of  Corinth, 
was  now  proposed,  and  the  command 
was  given  to  Lord  Byron,  who  entered 
into  the  project  with  great  enthusiasm. 
The  delay  of  Parry,  the  engineer,  who 
was  expected  with  supplies  necessary 
for  the  formation  of  a  brigade  of  artil- 
lery, for  some  time  checked  this  impor- 
tant enterprise,  and  a  still  more  for- 
midable embarrassment  presented  itself 
in  the  turbulence  and  insubordination 
of  the  Suliote  troops,  on  whose  services 
it  depended.  Presuming  upon  the 
generosity  of  Lord  Byron  and  their 
own  military  importance,  they  never 
ceased  to  rise  in  the  extravagance  of 


their  demands.  They  pleaded  the 
utterly  destitute  and  homeless  state  of 
their  families,  whom  they  had  been 
compelled  to  bring  with  them,  as  r 
pretext  for  their  exaction  and  discon- 
tent. A  serious  riot,  which  occurred 
between  the  Suliotes  and  the  people, 
and  in  which  several  lives  were  lost, 
also  added  much  to  the  anxiety  of 
Lord  Byron,  who  deeply  felt  the 
disappointment  which  the  ill  success 
of  his  endeavours  had  caused  him. 

Towards  the  middle  of  February, 
the  indefatigable  activity  of  Mr.  Parry 
having  brought  the  artillery  brigade 
into  such  a  state  of  forwardness  as  to 
be  almost  ready  for  service,  an  inspec- 
tion of  the  Suliote  corps  took  place 
preparatory  .  to  the  expedition  ;  and 
after  much  of  the  usual  deception  and 
unman agebleness  on  their  part,  every 
obstacle  appeared  to  be  at  length 
surmounted.  It  was  agreed  that  they 
should  receive  a  month's  pay  in  ad- 
vance ;  —  Count  Gamba,  with  three 
hundred  of  their  corps  as  a  van-guard, 
was  to  march  next  day,  and  take  up  a 
position  under  Lepanto,  and  Lord 
Byron  with  the  main  body  and  the 
artillery  was  speedily  to  follow.  New 
difficulties,  however,  were  soon  started 
by  these  intractable  mercenaries,  and 
at  the  instigation,  as  it  afterwards 
appeared,  of  Colcotroni,  the  great  rival 
of  Mavrocordato,  they  put  forward 
their  exactions  in  a  new  shape,  by 
requiring  the  government  to  appoint 
generals,  colonels,  captains,  and  inferior 
officers  out  of  their  own  ranks,  to  the 
extent  that  there  should  be,  out  of 
three  or  four  hundred  Suliotes,  one 
hundred  and  fifty  above  the  rank  of 
private.  This  audacious  dishonesty 


526 


LORD  BYROK 


roused  the  anger  of  Lord  Byron,  and 
he  at  once  signified  to  the  whole  body 
that  all  negotiation  with  them  was  at 
an  end ;  that  he  could  no  longer  have 
confidence  in  persons  so  little  true  to 
their  engagements;  and,  although  he 
should  still  keep  up  the  relief  which 
he  had  given  to  their  families,  all  his 
engagements  with  them  were  thence- 
forward void. 

It  was  on  the  14th  of  February  that 
this  rupture  with  the  Suliotes  took 
place;  and  though  on  the  following 
day,  in  consequence  of  the  full  submis- 
sion of  their  chiefs,  they  were  again 
received  into  his  service  on  his  own 
terms,  the  whole  affair,  combined  with 
other  difficulties  that  beset  him,  agi- 
tated his  mind  considerably. 

While  these  vexatious  events  were 
occurring,  the  interruptions  of  his 
accustomed  exercise  by  the  rains  in- 
creased the  irritability  that  these  delays 
excited;  and  the  whole  together,  no 
doubt,  concurred  with  whatever  pre- 
disposing tendencies  were  already  in 
his  constitution  to  bring  on  that  con- 
vulsive fit — the  forerunner  of  his  death, 
— which,  on  the  evening  of  the  15th  of 
February,  seized  him.  He  was  sitting, 
at  about  eight  o'clock,  with  only  Mr. 
Parry  and  Mr.  Hesketh,  in  the  apart, 
ment  of  Colonel  Stanhope,  talking 
jestingly  upon  one  of  his  favorite 
topics,  the  difference  between  himself 
and  this  latter  gentleman,  and  saying 
that  "  he  believed,  after  all,  the  author's 
brigade  would  be  ready  before  the 
soldier's  printing-press."  There  was  an 
unusual  flush  on  his  face,  and  from  the 
rapid  changes  of  his  countenance  it 
was  manifest  that  he  was  suffering 
ander  some  nervous  agitation.  He 


then  complained  of  being  thirsty,  and 
calling  for  some  cider,  drank  it  upon 
which,  a  still  greater  change  being 
observable  over  his  features,  he  rose 
from  his  seat,  but  was  unable  to  walk, 
and,  after  staggering  a  step  or  two,  fell 
into  Mr.  Parry's  arms.  In  another 
minute  his  teeth  were  closed,  his  speech 
and  senses  gone,  and  he  was  in  strong 
convulsions.  The  fit  was,  however, 
as  short  as  it  was  violent:  in  a  few 
minutes  his  speech  and  senses  returned ; 
his  features,  though  still  pale  and 
haggard,  resumed  their  natural  shape, 
and  no  effect  remained  from  the  attack 
but  excessive  weakness.  %The  next 
morning  he  was  found  to  be  better, 
but  still  pale  and  weak,  and  he  com- 
plained much  of  a  sensation  of  weight 
in  his  head.  Leeches  were  therefore 
applied  to  his  temples,  but  on  their 
removal  it  was  some  time  before  they 
could  stop  the  blood,  which  flowed  so 
copiously  that  he  fainted  from  exhaus 
tion.  While  he  was  thus  lying  pros- 
trate upon  his  bed,  a  party  of  mutinous 
Suliotes  rushed  into  the  room,  covered 
with  dirt  and  splendid  attire,  franti- 
cally brandishing  their  arms,  and  wild- 
ly insisting  upon  compliance  with  their 
demands.  Lord  Byron,  electrified  by 
this  unexpected  act,  seemed  to  recover 
from  his  sickness,  and  the  more  they 
raged  the  more  his  calm  courage  re- 
turned. His  health  now  slowly  im- 
proved, and  his  strength  increased  so 
that,  in  a  few  days,  he  was  enabled  to 
take  his  daily  rides  in  the  neighbor- 
hood. 

On  the  9th  of  April,  Lord  Byrou 
went  out  on  horseback  with  Count 
Gramba.  About  three  miles  from 
Missolonghi  they  were  overtaken  by  a 


LOKD  BYRON. 


527 


heavy   shower,    and   returned   to   the 
walls  wet  through,  and  in  a  state  of 

O      / 

violent  perspiration.  It  Lad  been  their 
usual  practice  to  dismount  at  the  walls, 
and  return  to  their  house  in  a  boat; 
but  on  this  day,  Count  Gamba,  repre- 
senting to  Lord  Byron  how  dangerous 
it  would  be,  warm  as  he  then  was,  to 
sit  exposed  so  long  to  the  rain  in  a 
boat,  entreated  him  to  go  back  the 
whole  way  on  horseback.  To  this 
Lord  Byron  would  not  consent,  and 
they  accordingly  returned  as  usual. 
About  two  hours  after  his  return 
home  he  was  seized  with  a  shuddering, 
and  complained  of  a  fever  and  rheu- 
matic pains.  "  At  eight  this  evening," 
says  Count  Gamba,  "  I  entered  his 
room.  He  was  lying  on  a  sofa,  rest- 
less and  melancholy.  He  said  to  me, 
'  I  suffer  a  great  deal  of  pain.  I  do 
not  care  for  death,  but  these  agonies  I 
cannot  bear.' "  The  following  day  he 
rose  at  his  accustomed  hour,  transacted 
business,  and  was  even  able  to  take  his 
ride  in  the  olive  -  woods.  He  com- 
plained, however,  of  perpetual  shud- 
derings,  and  had  no  appetite.  On  the 
evening  of  the  llth,  his  fever,  which 
was  pronounced  to  be  rheumatic,  in- 
creased; and  on  the  12th  he  kept  his 
bed  all  day.  The  two  following  days, 
although  the  fever  apparently  dimin- 
ished, he  became  still  more  weak,  and 
suffered  much  from  pains  in  his  head. 
About  three  o'clock  in  the  afternoon 
of  the  18th,  Lord  Byron  rose  and  went 
into  the  adjoining  room.  He  was  able 
to  walk  across  the  chamber,  leaning  on 
his  servant  Tita;  and,  when  seated, 
asked  for  a  book,  which  was  brought 
to  him.  After  reading,  however,  for  a 
few  minutes,  he  found  himself  faint ; 


and  again  taking  Tita's  arm,  tottered 
into  the  next  room  and  returned  to 
bed.  At  this  time,  the  physicians, 
becoming  alarmed,  held  a  consultation 
It  was  after  this  consultation,  as  it 
appears,  that  Lord  Byron  first  became 
aware  of  his  approaching  end.  Mr. 
Millingen,  Fletcher  and  Tita  were 
standing  around  his  bed ;  but  the  two 
first,  unable  to  restrain  their  tears,  left 
the  room.  Tita  also  wept,  but  as 
Byron  held  his  hand,  he  could  not 
retire.  He,  however,  turned  away  his 
face ;  while  Byron,  looking  at  him 
steadily,  said,  half  smiling,  "Oh, 
questa  e  una  bella  scena  !  "  He  then 
seemed  to  reflect  a  moment,  and  ex- 
claimed, "  Call  Parry."  Almost  immt 
diately  afterward,  a  fit  of  delirium 
ensued,  and  he  began  to  talk  wildly, 
as  if  he  were  mounting  a  breach  at  an 
assault,  calling  out  half  in  English^ 
half  in  Italian,  "Forward,  forward — 
courage  —  follow,"  etc.  On  coming 
again  to  himself,  he  asked  Fletcher 
whether  he  had  sent  for  Dr.  Thomas, 
as  he  desired.  On  being  told  that  he 
had,  he  expressed  his  satisfaction.  It 
was  now  evident  that  he  knew  he  was 
dying;  and  between  his  anxiety  to 
make  his  servant  know  his  last  wishes, 
and  the  rapid  failure  of  his  powers  of 
utterance,  a  most  painful  scene  ensued. 
On  Fletcher  offering  to  bring  pen  and 
paper  to  take  down  his  words — "  Oh, 
no,"  he  replied,  "there  is  no  time,  it  is 
now  nearly  over.  Go  to  my  sister — 
tell  her — go  to  Lady  Byron — you  will 
see  her,  and  say "  Here  his  voice 

•/ 

faltered,  and  gradually  became  indis- 
tinct, so  that  only  a  few  words  could 
be  heard. 

The  decision  adopted  by  the  consul 


LORD  BYEON. 


tation  had  been,  contrary  to  the  opinion 
of  Mr.  Millingen  and  Dr.  Freiber,  to 
administer  to  the  patient  a  strong  anti- 
spasmodic  potion,  which,  while  it 
produced  sleep,  possibly  hastened  his 
death.  After  taking  some  of  this,  he 
fell  into  a  slumber.  In  about  half  an 
hour  he  again  woke,  when  a  second 
dose  was  given  to  him.  His  speech 
now  became  very  indistinct,  though  he 
still  kept  on  muttering  to  himself  so 
incoherently  that  nothing  could  be 
understood.  About  six  o'clock  on  the 
evening  of  this  day,  he  said,  "now  I 
shall  go  to  sleep ;"  and  then,  turning 
round,  fell  into  that  slumber  from 
which  he  never  awoke.  For  the  next 
twenty-four  hours  he  lay  incapable  of 
either  sense  or  motion — with  the  excep- 
tion of,  now  and  then,  slight  symptoms 
of  suffocation,  during  which  his  ser- 
vant raised  his  head — and  at  a  quarter 
past  six  on  the  following  day,  the 
19th  of  April,  1824,  he  was  seen  to 
open  his  eyes,  and  immediately  shut 
them  again.  The  physicians  felt  his 
pulse — he  was  no  more  ! 

The  funeral  ceremony  took  place  in 


the  church  of  Saint  Nicholas,  at  Miss<> 
longhi,  on  the  22nd  of  April.  His 
remains  were  borne  to  the  church  on 
the  shoulders  of  the  officers  of  his 
corps,  in  the  midst  of  his  own  brigade, 
with  almost  the  whole  population 
following.  The  coffin  was  a  rude,  ill- 
constructed  chest  of  wood;  a  black 
mantle  served  for  a  pall ;  and  on  it 
were  placed  a  helmet  and  a  sword, 
with  a  crown  of  laurel.  After  the 
funeral  service  was  read,  the  bier  was 
left  in  the  church  until  the  next  day, 
that  all  might  view,  for  the  last  time, 
the  features  of  their  benefactor. 

The  first  step  taken,  before  any 
decision  as  to  its  ultimate  disposal, 
was  to  have  the  body  conveyed  to 
Z<ante,  and  on  the  morning  of  the  2d  of 
May,  the  remains  were  embarked, 
under  a  mournful  salute  from  the  gun  H 
of  the  fortress. 

It  was  on  Friday,  the  16th  of  July 
that,  in  the  small  village  church  of 
Hucknall,  the  last  duties  were  paid  to 
the  remains  of  Byron,  by  depositing 
them  close  to  those  of  his  mother,  in 
the  family  vault. 


ELIZABETH  FEY. 


531 


A.  private  journal,  which  she  kept  in 
her  seventeenth  year,  shows  a  .self- 
questioning  disposition,  with  a  desire 
for  the  improvement  of  life,  which 
were  gradually  preparing  her  for  ear- 
nest convictions  of  Christian  faith  and 
duty.  Unlike  many  diaries  of  the 
kind,  there  is  nothing  of  a  morbid 
character  in  the  little  record ;  but,  on 
the  contrary,  a  decidedly  practical 
turn.  Writing  on  a  bright  summer 
morning  in  June,  she  says :  "  Is  there 
not  a  ray  of  perfection  amidst  the 
sweets  of  this  morning?  I  do  think 
there  is  something  perfect  from  which 
all  good  flows."  She  appears  to  have 
been  often  drawn  by  the  beautiful 
scenery  around  her,  in  her  own  quota- 
tion of  the  poet,  "  to  look  through  Na- 
ture up  to  Nature's  God ;"  and  this  re- 
ligious sentiment  is  associated  in  her 
mind  with  a  desire  to  do  good  to 
others.  She  is  thus  early  learning  to 
govern  herself,  to  subdue  vanity  and 
selfishness.  "  We  should  first  look  to 
ourselves,"  she  Avrites,  "  and  try  to 
make  ourselves  virtuous,  and  then 
pleasing.  Those  who  are  truly  virtu- 
ous, not  only  do  themselves  good,  but 
they  add  to  the  good  of  all.  All  have 
a  portion  entrusted  to  them  of  the 
general  good,  and  those  who  cherish 
and  preserve  it  are  blessings  to  so- 
ciety at  large ;  and  those  who  do  not, 
become  a  curse.  It  is  wonderfully 
ordered,  how  in  acting  for  our  own 
good,  we  promote  the  good  of  others. 
My  idea  of  religion  is,  not  for  it  to 
unfit  us  for  the  duties  of  life,  like  a 
nun  who  leaves  them  for  prayer  and 
thanksgiving;  but  I  think  it  should 
stimulate  and  capacitate  us  to  perform 
these  duties  properly."  Another  day 


she  writes :  "  Some  poor  people  were 
here ;  I  do  not  think  I  gave  them  what 
I  did  with  a  good  heart.  I  am  inclin- 
ed, to  give  away;  but  for  a  week  past, 
owing  to  not  having  much  money,  I 
have  been  mean  and  extravagant. 
Shameful !  Whilst  I  live,  may  I  be 
generous ;  it  is  in  my  nature,  and  I 
will  not  overcome  so  good  a  feeling. 
I  am  inclined  to  be  extravagant,  and 
that  leads  to  meanness;  for  those  who 
will  throw  away  a  good  deal,  are  apt 
to  mind  giving  a  little."  An  acute  re- 
mark, this  last,  for  a  young  girl  living 
in  the  midst  of  abundance — a  key  to 
a  proper  economy — a  profound  maxim 
in  the  administration  of  wealth.  At 
the  end  of  a  year,  the  passages  given 
from  the  diary  present  the  following 
striking  entries :  "  My  mind  is  in  a 
state  of  fermentation ;  I  believe  I  am 
going  to  be  religious,  or  some  such 
thing.  *  *  *  I  am  a  bubble,  with- 
out reason,  without  beauty  of  mind  or 
person,  I  am  a  fool ;  I  daily  fall  lower 
in  my  own  estimation.  What  an  in- 
finite advantage  it  would  be  for  me  to 
occupy  my  time  and  thoughts  well." 
In  this  state  of  mind,  with  the  pro- 
blem of  her  destiny  in  a  life  of  religi- 
ous faith  and  active  devotion  to  benefi- 
cence half  worked  out,  at  a  Friends' 
Meeting  at  Norwich,  in  February, 
1798^,  she  listens  to  an  address  by 
William  Savery,  an  American  preacher 
of  the  Society  of  Quakers,  one  of  that 
faithful  band  of  missionaries  of  the 
sect  in  the  last  century  who,  in  various 
lands,  bore  their  testimony  to  the  in- 
finite value  of  the  soul  of  man,  and 
the  superiority  and  strength  of  the 
spiritual  life  above  and  beyond  all 
accidental  conditions.  The  Americar 


532 


ELIZABETH   FEY 


Colonies,  not  always  grateful  for  the 
gift,  too  often  returning  hatred  and 
persecution  for  love,  and  brotherly 
kindness,  and  religious  freedom,  owed 
much  in  their  imperfect  civilization  to 
these  itinerant  disciples  of  George 
Fox ;  and  now  one  of  them,  on  a  visit 
to  England,  was  to  repay  the  obliga- 
tion in  the  formation  and  development 
of  one  of  her  leading  philanthropists. 
Her  own  account,  in  her  diary,  of 
the  first  meeting  with  Savery,  exhibits 
a  somewhat  tumultuous  feeling,  verg- 
towards  enthusiasm ;  but  regulated  by 
a  characteristic  caution  and  distrust. 
"  I  have  had  a  faint  light  spread  over 
my  mind,"  she  writes,  "  at  least  I  be- 
lieve it  is  something  of  that  kind, 
owing  to  having  been  much  with,  and 
heard  much  excellence  from  one  who 
appears  to  me  a  true  Christian.  It 
has  caused  me  to  feel  a  little  religion. 
My  imagination  has  been  worked  upon, 
and  I  fear  all  that  I  have  felt  will  go 
off.  I  feel  it  now ;  though  at  first  I 
was  frightened,  that  a  plain  Quaker 
should  have  made  so  deep  an  impres- 
sion upon  me;  but  how  truly  preju- 
diced in  me  to  think,  that,  because 
good  came  from  a  Quaker,  I  should  be 
led  away  by  enthusiasm  and  folly." 
This  remark  sounds  a  little  oddly, 
coming  from  a  member  tof  a  family 
which  had  so  long  been  in  the  sect ; 
but  it  marks  a  very  prominent  distinc- 
tion, which  had  grown  up  between 
what  she  called  the  "  plain,"  and  what 
may  be  termed  the  latitudinarian 
division  of  the  fraternity.  The  banker's 
household  were  evidently  of  the  latter 
way  of  thinking,  less  restricted  in 
dress,  amusements  and  intercourse  with 
the  world ;  and  Elizabeth,  accustomed 


to  think  for  herself,  may  have  shown 
an  unusual  degree  of  independence, 
while  her  youth  and  sprightliness  were 
likely  to  attract  to  her  sotne  of  the 
vanities  of  life.  Two  days  after  the 
preaching  of  Savery,  there  is  a  charac- 
teristic entry  in  the  diary :  "  My  mind 
has  by  degrees  flown  from  religion.  I 
rode  to  Norwich,  and  had  a  veiy 
serious  ride  there ;  but  meeting,  and 
being  looked  at,  with  apparent  admir- 
ation by  some  officers,  brought  on 
vanity ;  and  I  came  home  as  full  of 
the  world,  as  I  went  to  town  full  of 
heaven."  Her  more  serious  emotions, 
however,  preponderate,  while  on  a  visit 
the  same  month  to  London  with  its 
gaieties  and  amusements  in  prospect, 
which  is  to  test  the  young  lady's 
resolutions  of  self-denial  more  severely 
than  the  casual  glance  of  the  military 
gentlemen  quartered  at  Norwich. 
There  is  one  safeguard,  however ; — 
William  Savery  is  to  be  in  the  great 
metropolis  at  the  same  time,  and  she 
will  "  see  him  most  likely,  and  all 
those  plain  Quakers." 

Looking  back  upon  this  visit  to 
London,  after  an  interval  of  thirty 
years,  Mrs.  Fry  regarded  it  as  as  an 
important  experience  of  the  pleasures 
of  the  world  in  which  she  had  found 
much  that  was  questionable,  and  which 
she  was  enabled  to  relinquish,  on 
proof  of  their  vanity  and  folly.  At 
the  time,  she  was  pleased  to  think,  as 
she  records  in  her  diary,  that  she  did 
not  "  feel  Eastham  at  all  dull  after  the 
bustle  of  London  ;  on  the  contrary,  a 
better  relish  for  the  sweet  innocence 
and  beauties  of  nature."  A  timely 
letter  from  William  Savery,  written 
with  that  simplicity  and  feeling  and 


ELIZABETH  FEY. 


fulness  of  religious  hope  and  consola- 
tion derived  from  the  Gospel,  which 
characterizes  in  so  remarkable  a  man- 
ner the  compositions  of  the  early 
Quakers,  where  their  piety  seems  to 
inspire  their  style  with  a  rare  grace 
and  sweetness  beyond  the  reach  of 
artificial  rhetoric,  —  this  affectionate 
letter,  peculiarly  adapted  to  her  state 
of  mind,  may  well  have  strengthened 
her  resolution  to  an  advancement  in 
the  life  of  holiness  upon  which  she 
had  already  entered.  It  is  noticeable 
how  soon  this  counsel  influenced  her 
life  in  the  practical  work  of  doing 
good.  One  of  her  very  first  acts  on 
her  return  from  London,  was  to  devote 
herself  to  an  old  dying  servant  living 
at  a  cottage  in  the  park,  and  we  pres- 
ently hear  of  a  plan  of  gathering  poor 
children  about  her  for  Biblical  and 
religious  instruction  on  Sunday  even- 
ings. Meantime,  she  lays  down  for 
herself  these  golden  rules  of  living. 
"  First,  never  lose  any  time ;  I  do  not 
think  that  lost  which  is  spent  in 
amusement  or  recreation,  some  time 
every  day ;  but  always  be  in  the  habit 
of  being  employed.  Second,  never  err 
the  least  in  truth.  Third,  never  say  an 
ill  thing  of  a  person,  when  I  can  say 
a  good  thing  of  them ;  not  only  speak 
charitably,  but  feel  so.  Fourth,  never 
be  irritable  nor  unkind  to  anybody. 
Fifth,  never  indulge  myself  in  luxuries 
that  are  not  necessary.  Sixth,  do  all 
things  with  consideration,  and  when 
my  path  to  act  right  is  most  difficult, 
feel  confidence  in  that  power  that 
alone  is  able  to  assist  me,  and  exert 
my  own  powers  as  far  as  they  go." 

While  these  new  and  more  earnest 
views  of  life  were  being  formed  in  her 


mind  she  is  preparing  to  assimilate  in 
some  external  matters  to  the  habits  of 
the  more  rigid  Quakers — finding  it 
impossible,  as  she  says,  to  keep  up  to 
their  principles  without  altering  her 
dress  and  speech.  "Plainness,"  she 
is  ready  to  vindicate,  "  as  a  sort  of  pro- 
tection to  the  principles  of  Christian- 
ity in  the  present  state  of  the  world." 
At  length  the  cap  and  close  handker- 
chief of  the  Society  of  Friends  are 
adopted  with  their  other  peculiarities, 
and  she  henceforth  appears  as  she  is 
represented  in  the  portrait  which  ac- 
companies this  biography,  fully  a  Qua- 
keress to  outer  view  as  in  her  inner 
life.  And  all  this  change  was  accom- 
plished while  she  was  living  in  ease 
and  affluence,  by  the  time  she  was 
twenty. 

It  was  early  in  the  year  1780  that 
she  received  proposals  of  marriage  from 
Joseph  Fry,  a  wealthy  merchant  »of 
London ;  a  strict  member  of  the  Society 
of  Friends.  After  considerable  anxiety, 
with  "  many  doubts,  many  risings  and 
fallings  about  the  affair  "  in  relation  to 

o 

her  spiritual  welfare,  the  offer  was 
looked  upon,  as  it  is  apt  to  be  in  such 
cases,  as  a  call  of  duty,  and  accepted. 
The  marriage,  accordingly,  took  place 
in  August,  at  the  Friends'  Meeting 
House,  in  Norwich. 

Mrs.  Fry  now,  for  some  years,  accord- 
ing to  the  custom  of  the  day,  resided 
with  her  husband  in  the  large  commo- 
dious house  in  which  his  business  was 
transacted,  in  St.  Mildred's  Court,  in 
London.     Her  associations  were  with 
the  stricter  members  of  the  Society  of 
Friends,  of  whom,  from  time  to  time, 
she  met  with  many  of  the  most  distin 
guished,  and  was   encouraged  in   the 


534 


ELIZABETH   FEY. 


practical  work  of  philanthropy  upon 
which  she  had  already  set  her  heart. 
Her  diary,  which  was  regularly  kept 
up,  exhibits  more  of  an  introspective 
character,  showing  her  thoughts  oc- 
cupied in  her  religious  culture  and  in 
the  vicissitudes  of  her  large  family 
connexion.  She  herself  became  the 
mother  of  a  numerous  offspring,  ten 
children  in  all,  the  last  being  born  in 
1816,  so  that  much  of  her  time  was 
engrossed  in  household  cares.  In  1809, 
on  the  death  of  her  father-in-law,  she 
removed  from  London,  with  her  hus- 
band, to  his  country  residence  at  Flas- 
ket House,  in  Essex,  where  she  was 
again  surrounded  by  the  rural  associa- 
tions of  her  youth,  and  returned  to 
that  enjoyment  of  the  beauties  of  na- 
ture which  was  always  a  passion  with 
her.  Here,  too,  she  developed  those 
schemes  for  the  improvement  of  the 
poor  which  she  had  early  entertained, 
visiting  the  sick  and  laborers  in  their 
cottages,  providing  them  with  the 
necessaries  of  life  and  assisting  in  open- 
ing a  school  for  girls,  in  accordance 
with  the  method  of  Joseph  Lancaster, 
.v  nose  school  for  poor  children  she  had 
visited  in  London,  where  she  had  also 
been  appointed  visitor  to  a  school  of 
the  Society  at  Islington.  After  her 
father's  death,  which  happened  in  the 
autumn  of  this  year,  she  occasionally 
spoke  in  the  meetings,  and  after  a  year 
or  so  was  duly  recognized  as  a  Minister 
or  Preacher  of  the  Society  to  which 
she  was  attached.  In  1813  we  find 
her  attending  some  of  the  prominent 
meetings  in  London  in  this  capacity, 
and  in  January  of  that  year  making 
her  first  visit  to  Newgate  Prison,  which 
was  soon  to  become  the  scene  of  her 


philanthropic  labors,  destined  in  theij 
progress  to  render  important  aid  in 
one  of  the  great  works  of  reform  of  the 
century.  She  was  led  to  Newgate,  in 
consequence  of  the  representations  of 
several  members  of  the  Society  of 
Friends  of  her  acquaintance,  who  had 
visited  some  persons  about  to  be  ex- 
ecuted. "  Mrs.  Fry  was  accompanied  in 
her  visit  by  a  sister  of  the  eminent 
philanthropist,  Sir  Thomas  Fowell 
Buxton,  who  had  a  few  years  before 
married  her  own  sister  Hannah.  They 
found  the  female  prisoners  in  a  lamen- 
table condition  of  neglect  and  destitu- 
tion. 

Though  the  care  of  her  rapidly  in- 
creasing family  was  quite  sufficient  to 
occupy  her  attention  during  the  ensu- 
ing four  years  her  zeal  was  kept  alive 
by  the  efforts  of  her  brother-in-law. 
Samuel  Hoare,  and  Sir  Thomas  Fowell 
Buxton,  in  their  work  of  prison  reform 
and  discipline  in  relation  to  juvenile 
offenders.  She  visited,  with  Hoare,  the 
women  in  Cold  Bath  Fields  House  of 
Correction,  where  she  witnessed  tht 
evils  of  the  neglect  into  which  institu 
tions  of  its  class  in  England  had  gener- 
ally fallen.  But  it  was  not  till  the 
close  of  1816  that  she  fairly  herself 
entered  upon  her  practical  work  of 
reform  among  the  female  prisoners  of 
Newgate.  At  her  own  request,  on  this 
her  second  visit  to  the  prison,  she  was 
left  alone  with  the  women  for  some 
hours — a  memorable  scene,  suggesting 
much  to  the  imagination  in  its  wild 
details,  of  which  we  have  no  more  par- 
ticular notice  than  that  Mrs.  Fry  read  to 
the  assembly  the  parable  of  the  Lord 
of  the  vineyard,  from  the  Gospel  of  St. 
Matthew,  and  appealed  to  the  hearts 


ELIZABETH  FEY. 


535 


of  her  hearers,  by  the  proffers  of  mercy 
from  the  Saviour,  even  at  the  eleventh 
hour.  Calling  the  attention  of  the 
mothers  to.  the  forlorn  and  suffering 
slate  of  their  children,  she  proposed  to 
open  a  school  for  them  and  look  after 
their  welfare.  This  was  the  readiest 
way  of  reaching  the  hearts  of  the  par- 
ents, who  joyfully  entertained  the  sug- 
gestion. Mrs.  Fry  wisely  left  them  to 
think  over  the  matter  and  choose  a 
governess  from  among  themselves. 
They  did  so,  and  made  an  admirable 
selection  in  a  young  woman  (Mary 
Connor)  who  had  been  recently  com- 
mitted for  stealing  a  watch.  Presently, 
with  the  consent  of  the  Sheriffs  of 
London,  and  the  officials  of  the  prison, 
this  person  was  installed  as  school- 
mistress, in  a  vacant  cell  appropriated 
for  the  purpose,  over  a  group  of  child- 
ren and  young  persons  under  twenty- 
five  years  of  age.  Mrs.  Fry  was  pres- 
ent at  the  opening  of  the  school,  ac- 
companied by  her  friend  Mary  Sander- 
son, of  whose  sensations  on  the  occas- 
ion we  have  this  incidental  notice : 
"  The  railing  was  crowded  with  half 
naked  women,  struggling  together  for 
the  front  situations,  with  the  most 
boisterous  violence,  and  begging  with 
the  utmost  vociferation.  She  felt  as 
if  she  were  going  into  a  den  of  wild 
beasts ;  shuddering  when  the  door 
closed  upon  her,  and  she  was  locked  in 
with  such  a  herd  of  novel  and  desper- 
ate companions."  The  prison  authori- 
ties, though  they  approved  of  the  at- 
tempt, had  little  faith  in  its  success; 
indeed,  they  regarded  the  scheme  as 
visionary  and  hopeless.  It  was  left  to 
a  few  benevolent  women  to  prove  it 
otherwise.  Mrs.  Fry,  joined  with  a 


few  associates,  persevered,  overcoming 
all  obstacles  by  the  influence  of  kind- 
ness; and,  at  the  end  of  a  month,  hav- 
ing proved  the  practicability  of  the 
undertaking  by  actual  experiment,  a 
society  was,  in  April  1817,  formed, 
consisting  of  the  wife  of  a  clergyman 
and  eleven  members  of  the  Society  of 
Friends,  entitled  "  An  Association  for 
the  Improvement  of  the  Female  Pris- 
oners in  Newgate."  Their  object  was 
"  to  provide  for  the  clothing,  the  in- 
struction, and  the  employment  of  the 
women  ;  to  introduce  them  to  a  know- 
ledge of  the  Holy  Scripture,  and  to 
form  in  them,  as  much  as  possible, 
those  habits  of  order,  sobriety  and  in- 
dustry which  may  render  them  docile 
and  peaceable  while  in  prison,  and  re- 
spectable when  they  leave  it."  A 
body  of  rules,  twelve  in  number, 
necessary  for  carrying  out  these  de- 
signs, was  prepared  and  submitted 
severally  to  the  prison  women,  who 
voted  upon  each,  every  hand  being 
held  up  in  approbation.  By  these 
rules  a  matron  was  to  be  appointed  for 
the  general  superintendence;  suitable 
employment  was  to  be  engaged ;  clas- 
ses were  to  be  formed,  with  a  directing 
monitor  over  each ;  cleanliness  and 
order  were  fully  secured ;  instruction 
was  to  be  given  by  reading,  chiefly 
from  the  Scriptures.  To  render  the 
work  more  permanent  and  responsible, 
on  proof  of  its  practicability,  it  was 
adopted  by  the  proper  authorities,  and 
became  a  part  of  the  prison  system  of 
the  city.  At  first  it  was  confined  to 
the  prisoners  who  had  undergone  trial ; 
and  was  afterwards  extended  to  the 
other  prison  of  the  untried,  but  with 
less  success.  Owing  to  the  uncertainty 


536 


ELIZABETH   FRY. 


of  their  condition,  this  class  of  persons 
was  less  willing  to  work  and  submit 
to  restraint.  The  matron,  who  was 
appointed,  was  paid  in  part  by  the 
Corporation  and  partly  by  the  funds 
subscribed  for  the  Ladies'  Association- 
Other  expenses  were  provided  for  by 
charitable  contributions,  largely  from 
the  wealthy  Quaker  merchants.  In 
the  course  of  a  few  months,  in  the  au- 
tumn of  the  year,  the  success  of  the 
experiment  was  noticed,  in  corrobora- 
tion  of  his  own  views,  in  one  of  the 
addresses  to  the  public,  of  the  eminent 
reformer,  Robert  Owen,  of  Lanark.  In 
February  of  the  following  year  such 
an  interest  in  the  general  subject  had 
been  awakened  that  Mrs.  Fry  had  the 
honor  of  being  called  upon  to  give  her 
testimony  of  the  working  of  the  Ladies' 
Association  before  a  Committee  of  the 
House  of  Commons,  appointed  to  re- 
port on  the  Prisons  of  the  Metropolis. 
Her  endeavor  on  that  occasion  marks 
the  opening  of  a  new  era  in  the  work 
of  prison  reform.  It  appears  from 
Mrs.  Fry's  statement  that,  during  the 
whole  time  which  had  intervened,  some 
eight  or  nine  months,  since  the  plan 
had  been  put  in  operation,  she  had 
never  punished  or  proposed  punish- 
ment for  any  woman ;  that  the  rules 
had  been  strictly  attended  to;  that 
nearly  twenty  thousand  articles  of 
wearing  apparel  had  been  made  by 
the  prisoners,  averaging  in  earning  for 
each  person  of  about  eighteen  pence 
per  week,  which  was  generally  spent 
in  assisting  them  to  live  and  helping 
to  clothe  them  by  a  voluntary  sub- 
scription on  their  part,  supplemented 
by  double  the  sum  thus  furnished, 
given  by  the  Association;  that  the 


Scripture  readings  were  earnestly  re 
ceived,  while  many  had  been  taught 
to  read  a  little  themselves,  the  read 
ings  avoiding  matters  of  doctrine,  and 
being  confined  to  the  plain  morals  of 
the  Bible,  the  duties  towards  God  and 
man.  In  reply  to  various  questions, 
much  was  elicited  illustrating,  in  a 
very  striking  manner,  peculiarities  of 
the  unhappy  condition  of  the  persons 
thus  benefited,  and  bearing  upon  the 
general  subject  of  prison  improvement. 
It  was  fortunate  for  the  cause,  that 
this  first  experiment  was  tried  in  so 
conspicuous  a  place  as  Newgate.  For 
the  civilized  world,  London,  is  a  city 
set  upon  a  hill ;  and  here  the  work  of 
benevolence  was  carried  on  at  its  very 
heart.  There  was  at  once  the  most  to 
be  done,  and  the  best  help  toward  ac- 
complishing it.  A  success  thus  open 
to  the  eyes  of  the  world,  and  recog- 
nized by  Parliament,  could  not  fail  in 
finding  support  and  encouragement 
elsewhere.  But  it  was  reserved  es- 
pecially for  Mrs.  Fry,  by  her  personal 
exertions  and  influence,  to  perfect  in 
her  day  what  the  philanthropist  John 
Howard  had  striven  to  accomplish  a 
generation  or  two  before.  That,  after 
his  distinguished  labors  in  prison  re- 
formation, so  much  was  left  for  her  to 
accomplish,  is  a  humiliating  proof  of 
the  tendency  to  abuse  in  the  adminis- 
tration of  government  under  what 
might  be  considered  highly  favorable 
circumstances,  and  of  the  slow  pro- 
gress of  apparently  the  most  obvious 
improvements.  The  whole  plan  or 
scheme  of  .Mrs.  Fry  now  seems  very 
simple,  involving  only  ordinary  atten- 
tion to  the  decencies  of  life,  the  hum- 
blest means  of  religious  instruction. 


ELIZABETH  FEY. 


537 


with  the  plain  resources  of  an  indus- 
trial school.  By  the  aid  of  these  sim- 
ple elements,  the  employment  of  time, 
with  a  certain  customary  and  moral 
discipline,  controlled  by  Christian 
kindness,  a  great  work  was  to  be 
effected  throughout  the  world.  It  is 
not  too  much  to  say  that  the  con- 
science of  legistators  was  awakened 
throughout  Christendom  by  that  sim- 
ple experiment  of  one  benevolent 
Quaker  lady,  and  a  few  associates,  in 
the  prison  of  Newgate.  Its  first  fruits 
were  in  the  widening  circle  of  benevo- 
lent supervision,  extending  to  the  care 
of  the  convicts  on  their  way  to  trans- 
portation, thence  in  the  ships  at  sea, 
and  then  on  their  landing  at  their 
place  of  destination.  Before  Mrs.  Fry 
appeared  upon  the  scene,  the  most  dis- 
gusting condition  of  things  prevailed 
at  each  of  these  stages.  There  had 
been  riot  and  destruction  on  leaving 
the  prison,  breaking  of  windows,  fur- 
niture, and  the  like ;  soon  all  was  or- 
der and  quiet.  The  convicts  had  been 
generally  conveyed  to  the  water-side 
in  open  wagons,  amidst  noisy  and  vici- 
ous crowds ;  by  Mrs.  Fry's  influence, 
the  women  were  decently  removed  in 
hackney-coaches,  without  exposure  to 
insult.  Her  kind  solicitude  followed 
them  on  shipboard,  suggesting  (what 
was  adopted)  an  organization  into 
classes,  with  monitors,  chosen  by 
themselves,  for  the  preservation  of 
order.  In  correspondence  with  the 
proper  authorities,  she  urged  that  a 
suitable  provision  be  made  for  their 
reception  on  their  arrival  in  Van  Die- 
man's  Land.  She  also  took  earnestly 
to  heart,  and  enforced  by  examples 
drawn  from  her  own  observation,  the 
68 


evils  of  the  wide  adoption  of  capital 
punishment,  which  then  prevailed  in 
the  administration  of  English  criminal 
law,  and  w^hich  has  since  been  so  greatly 
curtailed. 

Like  Howard,  Mrs.  Fry  accomplish- 
ed much  in  her  journeys  about  Great 
Britain  and  Europe.  The  first  of  these, 
in  1818,  with  her  brother  Joseph  John 
Gurney,  primarily  connected  with  the 
concerns  of  the  Society  of  Friends,  in 
which  it  will  be  remembered  she  had 
been  for  some  time  an  active  leader,  led 
her  through  the  north  of  England  in- 
to Scotland,  where,  in  many  places, 
the  jails  were  found  to  be  in  the  most 
lamentable  condition,  with  great  suf- 
fering on  the  part  of  the  inmates — a 
terrible  picture  of  human  misery — 
which  was  presented  to  the  public  in 
all  its  howid  details,  that  they  might 
be  at  once  alleviated,  in  a  narrative  of 
the  tour  by  Mr.  Gurney.  The  treat- 
ment of  the  insane,  which  would  have 
been  disgraceful  if  practised  towards 
wild  beasts,  which  she  witnessed,  it 
need  not  be  said  awakened  her  deepest 
sympathies  and  earnest  efforts  for  its 
reform.  Humanity  shudders  at  the 
recital  of  what  this  brother  and  sister 
encountered  in  their  pilgrimage  in  be- 
half of  their  oppressed  and  suffering 
fellow-beings.  That  such  inflictions 
are  almost  impossible  at  present,  is 
largely  due  to  the  Christian  exertions 
of  this  devoted  Quaker  mother. 

In  1827,  she  visited  Ireland,  paying 
particular  attention  to  the  prisons  at 
Dublin,  and,  in  the  succeeding  years, 
traveled  largely  through  England,  and 
sojourned  for  a  time  in  the  island  of 
Jersey,  where  she  undertook,  and 
eventually  accomplished,  much  in 


538 


ELIZABETH  FRY. 


work  of  prisoii  reform.  She  also,  about 
this  time,  procured  the  introduction  of 
libraries  at  the  coast-guard  stations 
and  on  the  government  packets  —  a 
work  of  enlightenment,  which,  in  its 
extension,  is  one  of  the  most  benefi- 
cent social  improvements  of  our  own 
day.  She  paid  her  first  visit  to  Paris 
in  1838,  and  was  received  with  dis- 
tinguished attentions,  examining  care- 
fully, under  the  best  auspices,  the  va- 
rious prisons  of  the  metropolis,  was  in 
communication  with  various  celebri- 
ties, and  was  entertained  by  Louis 
Philippe  and  the  Eoyal  family.  On 
her  return  home,  we  find  her  medi- 
tating a  visit  to  the  United  States, 
where  her  brother,  Joseph  John  Gur- 
ney,  was  pursuing  his  labors  as  a  min- 
ister of  the  Gospel.  A  second  journey 
to  the  Continent  follows,  the  next  year; 
Paris,  its  prisons  and  hospitals  are 
again  visited ;  and  the  tour  is  extend- 
ed through  various  parts  of  France, 
and  into  Switzerland.  In  1840,  she 
travels  through  Belgium,  Holland,  and 
Germany;  countries  which  she  again 
visits  a  year  or  two  later.  She  is  also 
in  correspondence  with  the  authorities 
in  St.  Petersburgh — in  all,  whether  by 
person  or  by  letter,  with  a  single  eye 
to  her  constant  work  of  philanthropy. 


Her  last  visit  to  the  Continent,  chiefly 
confined  to  Paris,  was  in  1843.  After 
her  return  to  England,  we  read  of  her 
health  failing,  which  continued,  with 
more  or  less  of  suffering  and  privation, 
in  the  midst  of  family  afflictions,  till 
her  own  life,  too,  was  terminated  at 
Ramsgate,  on  the  12th  of  October, 
1845.  She  died  as  she  had  lived,  at 
peace  with  herself,  and  charity  with 
the  world,  in  the  enjoyment  of  the 
consolations  of  her  simple  Christian 
faith.  Her  remains  were  interred  in 
the  Friends'  burying-ground  at  Bark- 
ing. No  better  inscription  to  her 
memory  can  be  penned,  than  the  lines 
written  by  Hannah  More,  in  a  copy  of 
her  work  on  "  Practical  Piety." 

TO  MRS.  FRY. 

PBESENTED  BY  HANNAH  MORE. 

As  a  token  of  veneration 

Of  her  heroic  zeal, 

Christian  charity, 

And  persevering  kindness, 

To  the  most  forlorn 

Of  human  beings. 

They  were  naked,  and  she 

Clothed  them  ; 

In  prison,  and  she  visited  them  ; 
Ignorant,  and  she  taught  them, 

For  His  sake, 

In  His  name,  and  by  His  Word, 
Who  went  a>  out  doing  good. 


JohrisoixWilson  Ik.  Co., Pub: : 


ROBERT    PEEL 


rpHE  RIGHT  HONORABLE  SIR 
JL  ROBERT  PEEL,  Bart,  twice 
prime  minister,  and  for  many  years 
the  leading  statesman  of  England,  was 
born  on  the  5th  of  February,  1788,  in 
a  cottage  near  Chamber  Hall,  the  seat 
of  his  family,  in  the  neighborhood  of 
Bury — Chamber  Hall  itself  being  at 
the  time  under  repair.  He  was  a  scion 
of  that  new  aristocracy  of  wealth 
which  sprang  from  the  rapid  progress 
of  mechanical  discovery  and  manufac- 
tures in  the  latter  part  of  the  eight- 
eenth century.  His  ancestors  were 
Yorkshire  yeomen  in  the  district  of 
Craven,  whence  they  migrated  to 
Blackburn,  in  Lancashire.  His  grand- 
father, Robert  Peel,  first  of  Peelfold, 
and  afterwards  of  Brookside,  near 
Blackburn,  was  a  calico-printer,  who, 
appreciating  the  discovery  of  his  towns- 
man, Hargreaves,  took  to  cotton-spin- 
ning with  the  spinning- jenny,  and  grew 
a  wealthy  man.  His  father,  Robert 
Peel,  third  son  of  the  last-named,  car- 
ried on  the  same  business  at  Bury, 
with  still  greater  success,  in  partner- 
ship with  Mr.  Yates,  whose  daughter 
Ellen,  he  married ;  made  a  princely 

Abridged  from   the   "  Encyclopaedia   Britan- 


Pica.' 


fortune;  became  the  owner  of  Dray- 
ton  Manor,  and  member  of  Parliament 
for  the  neighboring  borough  of  Tarn 
worth ;  was  a  trusted  and  honored,  ap 
well  as  ardent,  supporter  of  Mr.  Pitt 
contributed  magnificently  towards  the 
support  of  that  leader's  war  policy; 
was  rewarded  with  a  baronetcy ;  and 
founded  a  rich  and  powerful  house,  on 
whose  arms  he  emblazoned,  and  in 
whose  motto  he  commemorated,  the 
prosperous  industry  from  which  it 
sprang.  The  great  minister  was  always 
proud  of  the  self-won  honors  of  his 
family ;  and  as  a  public  man  his  heart 
strongly  felt  the  bias  of  his  birth.  He 
was  sent,  however,  to  be  educated 
with  the  sons  of  the  old  nobility  and 
gentry  at  Harrow,  one  of  the  most 
aristocratic  of  English  schools,  and  at 
Christ  Church,  then  the  most  aristo- 
cratic of  English  colleges.  At  Har- 
row, according  to  the  accounts  of  his 
contemporaries,  he  was  a  steady,  in- 
dustrious boy ;  the  best  scholar  in  the 
school ;  fonder  of  solitary  walks  than 
of  the  games  of  his  companions,  but 
ready  to  help  those  who  were  duller 
than  himself ;  and  not  unpopular 
among  his  fellows.  At  Christ  Church 
where  he  entered  as  a  gentleman  com 

(539) 


540 


EOBEKT  PEEL. 


moner,  he  studied  hard,  and  was  the 
first  who,  under  the  new  examination 
statutes,  took  a  first  class  both  in 
classics  and  in  mathematics.  His  ex- 
amination in  the  Schools  for  his  B.A. 
degree  in  Michaelmas  term,  1808,  was 
an  academical  ovation  in  presence  of  a 
numerous  audience,  who  came  to  hear 
the  first  man  of  the  day ;  and  a  rela- 
tion who  was  at  Oxford  at  the  time 
has  recorded  that  the  triumph,  like 
both  the  triumphs  and  reverses  of 
after-life,  was  calmly  borne.  From  his 
classical  studies  Sir  Eobert  derived, 
not  only  the  classical,  though  some- 
what pompous  character  of  his 
speeches,  and  the  Latin  quotations 
with  which  they  were  often  happily 
interspersed,  but  something  of  his 
lofty  ideal  of  political  ambition.  Nor 
did  he  ever  cease  to  love  these  pur- 
suits of  his  youth  ;  and,  in  1837,  when 
elected  Lord  Rector  of  Glasgow  Uni- 
versity, he,  in  his  inaugural  speech, 
passed  a  glowing  eulogy  on  classical 
education.  To  his  mathematical  train- 
ing, which  was  then  not  common 
among  public  men,  he  no  doubt  owed 
in  part  his  method,  his  clearness,  and  his 
great  power  of  grasping  steadily  and 
working  out  difficult  and  complicated 
questions.  His  speeches  show  that, 
in  addition  to  his  academical  knowl- 
edge, he  was  well  versed  in  English 
literature,  in  history,  and  in  the  prin- 
ciples of  law.  In  after-life  he  had  a 
taste  for  art,  though  none  for  music, 
and  took  an  interest  in  science,  though 
he  had  no  scientific  education.  While 
reading  hard,  he  did  not  neglect  to 
develop  his  tall  and  vigorous  frame, 
and  fortify  his  strong  constitution,  by 
manly  and  gentlemanlike  exercises; 


and  .though  he  lost  his  life  partly 
through  his  ba.d  riding,  he  was  al- 
ways a  good  shot  and  an  untiring 
walker  after  game.  Sprung  from  the 
most  religious  class  of  English  so- 
ciety, he  grew  up  and  remained 
through  life  a  religious  man;  and 
from  that  source  drew  deep  con- 
scientiousness and  tranquillity  under 
all  difficulties  and  in  all  fortunes.  His 
Oxford  education  confirmed  him  in  the 
principles  of  the  Protestant  Church  of 
England.  His  practical  mind  remain- 
ed satisfied  with  the  doctrines  of  his 
youth ;  and  he  never  showed  that  he 
had  studied  the  great  religious  contro- 
versies, or  that  he  understood  the 
great  religious  movements  of  his  day. 
In  1809,  being  then  in  his  twenty- 
second  year,  he  was  brought  into  Par- 
liament for  the  close  borough  of  Cash  el, 
which  he  afterwards  exchanged  for 
Chippenham ;  and  commenced  his  par- 
liamentary career  under  the  eye  of  his 
father,  then  member  for  Tamworth, 
who  fondly  saw  in  him  the  future 
leader  of  the  Tory  party.  In  1811, 
he  was  made  Under-Secretary  for  the 
Colonies.  In  1812,  being  then  only  in 
his  twenty-fifth  year,  he  was  trans- 
ferred by  Lord  Liverpool  to  the  more 
important  post  of  Secretary  for  Ire- 
land. There  he  was  engaged  till  1817, 
when  he  obtained  the  highest  parlia- 
mentary distinction  of  the  Tory  party, 
by  being  elected  member  for  the  Uni- 
versity of  Oxford — an  honor  for  which 
he  was  chosen  in  preference  to  Canning, 
on  account  of  his  hostility  to  Catholic 
emancipation,  Lord  Eldon  lending  him 
his  best  support.  In  the  following 
year  he  resigned  the  Irish  secretary- 
ship, of  the  odious  work  of  which  he 


KOBEET  PEEL. 


543 


extended  to  Ireland.  The  last  rem- 
nants of  the  penal  laws  were  swept 
from  the  statute-book,  and  justice  was 
extended  to  the  Roman  Catholic 
Church  in  Canada  and  Malta. 

But  there  were  malcontents  in  Sir 
Robert  Peel's  party  whose  presence 
often  caused  embarrassment.  The  fa- 
tal question  was  Protection,  which 
was  being  fast  brought  to  a  crisis  by 
public  opinion  and  the  Anti-Corn  Law 
League.  Sir  Robert  Peel,  who  had 
been  long  in  principle  a  free  trader, 
proposed  to  his  cabinet  the  repeal 
of  the  Corn  Laws.  Lord  Stanley  and 
the  Duke  of  Buccleuch  dissented, 
and  Sir  Robert  resigned.  But  Lord 
Russell  failed  to  form  a  new  govern- 
ment. Sir  Robert  again  came  into 
office;  and  now,  with  the  consent  of 
all  the  cabinet  but  Lord  Stanley,  who 
retired,  he,  in  a  great  speech  on  the 
27th  of  January,  1846,  brought  the 
repeal  of  the  Corn  Laws  before  the 
House  of  Commons.  His  measure  was 
carried;  but  immediately  afterwards 
the  offended  Protectionists,  goaded  by 
Lord  George  Bentinck  and  Mr.  Dis- 
raeli, coalesced  with  the  Whigs,  and 
threw  him  out  on  the  Irish  Coercion 
Bill.  He  went  home  from  his  defeat, 
escorted  by  a  great  crowd,  who  un- 
covered as  he  passed,  and  immediately 
resigned. 

Though  out  of  office,  he  was  not  out 
of  power.  He  had  "lost  a  party,  but 
won  a  nation."  The  Whig  ministry 
which  succeeded  him  leaned  much 
on  his  support,  with  which  he  never 
taxed  them.  He  joined  them  in  carry- 
ing forward  free  trade  principles  by 
the  repeal  of  the  Navigation  Laws 


He  joined  them  in  carrying  forward 
the  principle  of  religious  liberty  by 
the  bill  for  the  emancipation  of  the 
Jews.  One  great  measure  was  his  own. 
It  was  the  Encumbered  Estates  Bill  for 
Ireland,  which  transferred  the  land  of 
that  country  from  ruined  landlords  to 
solvent  owners  capable  of  performing 
the  duties  of  property  towards  the 
people.  On  the  28th  of  June,  1850, 
he  made  a  great  speech  on  the  Greek 
question  against  Lord  Palmerston's 
foreign  policy  of  interference.  This 
speech  being  against  the  government, 
was  thought  to  show  that  he  was 
ready  to  return  to  office.  It  was  his 
last.  On  the  following  day  he  was 
thrown  from  his  horse  on  Constitution 
Hill,  and  mortally  injured  by  the  fall. 
Three  days  he  lingered  in  all  the  pain 
which  the  quick  nerves  of  genius  can 
endure.  On  the  fourth  (July  2, 1850,) 
he  took  the  sacrament,  bade  a  calm 
farewell  to  his  family  and  friends,  and 
died ;  and  a  great  sorrow  fell  on  the 
whole  land.  All  the  tributes  which 
respect  and  gratitude  could  pay  were 
paid  to  him  by  the  Sovereign,  by  Par- 
liament, by  public  men  of  all  parties, 
by  the  country,  by  the  press,  and, 
above  all,  by  the  great  towns  and  the 
masses  of  the  people  to  whom  he  had 
given  "bread  unleavened  with  injus- 
tice." He  would  have  been  buried 
among  the  great  men  of  England  in 
Westminster  Abbey,  but  his  will  de- 
sired that  he  might  be  laid  in  Drayton 
Church.  It  also  renounced  a  peerage 
for  his  family,  as  he  had  before  de- 
clined the  garter  for  himself  when 
offered  him  by  the  Queen  through 
Lord  Aberdeen. 


WILLIAM     WORDSWORTH. 


,  a 
er- 


TTTILLIAM   WORDSWORTH 

W  was  born  at'^Cdcker] 
small  town  near  th%Jbanks  of 
went,  in  Cumberland  County  ,J£ng' 
on  the  7i|p)yVprir  1770.  ijis  fatli'^r, 
John  W^plsWorth,  descended  from  an 
an cienlyf jtmily,  which,  had  beeif  settled 
in  YorlujRyfc,  was  an  attorney-at-law 
by  profession,  and  law  agent  to  the 
Earl  of  Lonsdale.  He  was  maMed  in 
1766  to  Anne,  daughter  of  William 
Cookson,  mercer,  of  Penrith,  and  of 
Dorothy  Crackanthorp,  a  descendant 
of  the  ancient  family  of  that  name 
which  from  the  days  of  Edward  III. 
had  occupied  Newbiggen  Hall,  in 
Westmoreland.  There  were  five  child- 
ren of  this  union :  Richard,  who  be- 
came a  lawyer  and  died  in  1816 ;  Wil- 
liam, the  Poet ;  Dorothy,  born  in  1771 ; 
John  Wordsworth,  who  was  lost  at 
sea  off  Weymouth,  in  command  of  an 
East  Indiaman,  in  1805 ;  and  Chris- 
topher, a  divine  and  author  of  emi- 
nence, the  father  of  the  Bishop  of 
Lincoln,  the  poet's  biographer.  John 
Wordsworth,  the  poet's  father,  is  des- 
cribed as  "a  person  of  considerable 
mental  vigour  and  eloquence."  He 
was  rapidly  rising  in  his  profession 
when  a  dark  shadow  passed  over  his 

(544) 


life  in  the  death  of  his  wife  in  1778, 
after  which,  his  son,  the  poet,  tells  us 
he  never  recovered  his  usual  cheerful 
ness  of  mind.  He  survived  the  event 
less  than  six  years,  being  carried  off 
by  illness  resulting  from  a  cold  caught 
from  exposure  at  night  in  a  profes 
sional  ride  in  which  he  had  lost  his 
way  among  the  mountains  of  the 
country.  At  his  death,  his  son  Wil- 
liam was  in  his  fourteenth  year.  His 
education  up  to  this  time,  so  far  as 
school  instruction  went — an  important 
qualification  in  the  case  of  a  man  who 
was  so  little  indebted  to  teachers  for 
the  developement  of  his  mental  acquir- 
ments — had  been  assisted  by  an  an- 
cient dame  at  Penrith,  a  schoolmistress 
of  the  old  school  who  is  reported  to 
have  been  more  intent  on  exercising 
the  memory  than  prematurely  testir.g 
the  reasoning  faculties  of  her  pupils — 
a  neglect  or  forbearance  for  which 
Wordsworth  appears  to  have  been 
duly  grateful  in  after-life,  thinking  it 
the  most  philosophical  method.  His 
father  also,  we  are  told,  "  set  him  very 
early  to  learn  portions  of  the  works 
of  the  best  English  poets  by  heart,  so 
that  at  an  early  age  he  could  repeat 
large  portions  of  Shakespeare,  Milton, 


WILLIAM   WORDSWORTH. 


545 


and  Spencer."  He  was  also  instructed 
in  the  rudiments  of  learning,  at  Cockr 
ermouth,  by  the  Rev.  Mr.  Gilbanks; 
and,  in  his  ninth  year,  was  sent  with 
his  elder  brother  to  an  ancient  public 
school  at  Hawkshead,  in  Lancashire, 
founded  by  Archbishop  Sandj^s,  in  the 
sixteenth  century.  Here,  as  in  his  na- 
tive village,  he  was  surrounded  by 
those  favorable  influences  of  nature 
which  always  had  so  beneficial  an 
effect  upon  his  moral  and  intellectual 
character — influences  so  gratefully  ac- 
knowledged on  many  pages  of  his 
writings.  Thus,  in  that  autobiograph- 
ical poem  mainly  devoted  to  his  early 
life,  "The  Prelude,  or  Growth  of  a 
Poet's  Mind,"  he  writes  : 

"Fair  seed-time  had  my  soul,  and  I  grew  up, 
Fostered  alike  by  beauty  and  by  fear  : 
Much  favored  in  my  birth-place,  and  no  less 
In  that  beloved  Vale,  to  which,  ere  long, 
We  were  transplanted — there  were  we  let  loose 
For  sports  of  wider  range. " 

The  vale  was  the  beautiful  vale  of 
Esthwaite,  with  its  lake,  near  which 
Hawkshead  was  situated.  It  was  the 
custom  for  the  pupils  of  the  school  to 
board  with  the  dames  of  the  village 
and  neighboring  hamlets,  which  intro- 
duced them  to  an  honest  simplicity  of 
living,  which  ever  dwelt  gracefully  in 
the  recollection  of  our  poet,  as  in  these 
lines  of  the  Prelude,  directly  commem- 
orating the  scene : — 

' '  Ye  lowly  cottages,  wherein  we  dwelt, 
A  ministration  of  your  own  was  yours ; 
Can  I  forget  you,  being,  as  you  were, 
So  beautiful  among  the  pleasant  fields 
In  which  ye  stood  ?  or  can  I  here  forget 
The  plain  and  seemly  countenance  with  which 
Ye  dealt  out  your  plain  comforts  ? " 

with  that  quaint  idyllic  scene  which 
69 


follows  in  the  verse,  picturing  the 
evening  indoor  studies  of  the  youth? , 
and  the  amusement  they  extracted 
from  a  well-worn,  dilapidated  pack  of 
cards : — 

"Those  sooty  knaves,  precipitated  down 
.With   scoffs  and  taunts,    like  Vulcan  out   of 

heaven : 

The  paramount  ace,  a  moon  in  her  eclipse, 
Queens  gleaming  through  their  splendor's  last 

decay ; 

And  monarchs  surly  at  the  wrongs  sustained 
By  royal  visages." 

Meanwhile,  for  the  Muse  of  Words- 
worth, impatient  of  confinement  with- 
in, must  soon  turn  to  Nature  with- 
out:— 

"Abroad 

Incessant  rain  was  falling,  or  the  frost 
Raged  bitterly,  with  keen  and  silent  tooth ; 
And,  interrupting  oft  that  eager  game, 
From  under  Esthwaite's  splitting  fields  of  ice 
The  pent-up  air,  struggling  to  free  itself, 
Gave  out  to  meadow  grounds  and  hills  a  loud 
Protracted  yelling,  like  the  noise  of  wolves 
Howling  in  troops  along  the  Bothnic  Main." 

While  Wordsworth  was  at  Hawks- 
head  school,  the  head  master,  Taylor, 
died,  and  the  upper  boys,  Wordsworth 
among  them,  were  called  to  a  leave- 
taking  at  his  death-bed — a  scene 
which  is  also  spoken  of  in  the  Prelude, 
with  this  tribute  to  the  master : — 

"  He  loved  the  Poets,  and,  if  now  alive, 
Would  have  loved  me,  as  one  not  destitute 
Of  promise,  nor  belying  the  kind  hope 
That  he  had  formed,  when  I,  at  his  command, 
Began  to  spin,  with  toil,  my  earliest  songs." 

These  early  verses,  on  subjects  set  by 
the  master,  were  on  "The  Summer 
Vacation,"  and  an  elaborate  effort  in 
the  versification  of  Pope's  heroic  cou 
plets — in  celebration  of  the  two-hun 
dredth  anniversary  of  the  foundation 


540 


WILLIAM   WORDSWORTH. 


of  the  school.  The  task  completed, 
the  youthful  poet  was  moved  to  write 
to  please  himself ;  and,  as  he  tells  us, 
he  composed,  while  yet  a  school-boy, 
a  long  poem,  running  upon  his  own 
adventures,  and  the  scenery  of  the 
country  in  which  he  was  brought  up. 
Of  this,  only  a  single  passage  has  been 
preserved,  which  stands  in  the  classifi- 
cation of  the  author's  poems,  at  tho 
head  of  those  written  in  youth.  They 
are  certainly  good  lines  for  a  boy  of 
fourteen,  and  noticeable  for  a  vein  of 
sentiment,  entertained  thus  early, 
which  was  to  pervade  the  writer's  long 
life. 

Wordsworth,  always  demanding  for 
himself  personal  freedom,  in  a  fragment 
of  autobiography,  expresses  his  satis- 
faction with  his  school-days,  pronounc- 
ing them  "  very  happy  ones,  chiefly  be- 
cause I  was  left  at  liberty,  then,  and 
in  the  vacations,  to  read  whatever 
books  I  liked.  For  example,  I  read 
all  Fielding's  works,  Don  Quixote,  Gil 
Bias,  and  any  part  of  Swift  that  I 
liked ;  Gulliver's  Travels,  and  the  Tale 
of  a  Tub,  being  both  much  to  my 
taste."  Besides  this  private  stock  of 
English  literature,  to  which  is  to  be 
added  his  early  acquaintance  with  the 
poets,  Wordsworth  carried  away  with 
him  from  school  a  respectable  knowl- 
edge of  Latin,  for  which,  he  tells  us, 
he  was  mainly  indebted  to  one  of  the 
ushers  at  Hawkshead,  who  taught  him 
more  of  the  language  in  a  fortnight 
than  he  had  learned  in  his  preceding 
two  years'  study  at  the  school  at  Cock- 
ermouth. 

Before  leaving  this  early  period  of 
fche  poet's  life,  the  reminiscences  must 
not  be  forgotten,  which  he  has  given 


us  of  his  mother,  who  once  said  to  one 
of  her  female  friends,  that  u  the  only 
one  of  her  five  children,  about  whose 
future  life  she  was  anxious,  was  Wil- 
liam ;  and  he,  she  said,  would  be  re- 
markable either  for  good  or  evil,  the 
cause  of  this  saying  being  that  I  was 
of  a  stiff,  moody  and  violent  temper." 
This  element  of  his  character  was  con- 
quered, not  by  restraint,  but  by  free- 
dom, by  leaving  nature,  under  favora- 
ble circumstances,  to  work  out  her  own 
cure,  when,  what  would  otherwise 
have  been  a  calamity,  became  a  con- 
dition of  strength.  It  is  noticeable 
how  the  poet,  again  and  again,  in  his 
writings,  advocates  this  life  of  liberty. 
In  his  poetical  notice  of  his  mother,  it 
is  her  main  eulogy  that  she  could  trust 
much  to  God's  good  government  of 
the  world,  in  the  unfettered  de\7elop- 
ment  of  the  life  of  her  child. 

The  father  of  Wordsworth  dying,  as 
we  have  stated,  while  his  son  was  yet 
a  school-boy,  he  was  left,  with  his 
brothers,  to  the  care  of  their  two  un- 
cles, Richard  Wordsworth  and  Chris- 
topher Crackanthorpe,  by  whom  he 
was  sent,  in  1787,  in  his  eighteenth 
year,  to  the  University  of  Cambridge, 
and  became  a  member  of  St.  John's 
College.  The  estate  left  by  his  father, 
suddenly  cut  off  in  the  midst  of  his 
professional  pursuits,  with  a  fortune  in 
prospect,  rather  than  in  possession,was 
necessarily  small,  and  it  was  dimin- 
ished by  the  expenses  of  litigation  in 
a  protracted  suit  to  recover  a  debt  due 
from  Lord  Lonsdale ;  but  enough  was 
left,  with  economy,  for  the  honorable 
maintenance  of  the  family.  Words 
worth,  in  the  portion  of  the  "  Prelude ' 
devoted  to  his  College  life,  tells  us  of 


1    WILLIAM   WORDSWORTH. 


549 


inspirers  of  the  way  and  the  heart  of 
Europe  for  the  scene,  there  could  be 
but  one  spirit,  that  of  joy  and  exulta- 
tion, on  the  journey.  It  introduced  the 
poet  to  the  wonders  of  the  Alps,  and 
the  sweet  landscape  upon  which  the 
mountains  descend  in  Northern  Italy. 
For  fourteen  Aveeks,  from  July  to  Oc- 
tober, they  traversed,  mostly  on  foot, 
France ,  from  Calais  to  Lyons,  passing 
through  Switzerland,  crossing  by  the 
Simplon  to  the  lake  of  Como,  and  re- 
tracing their  steps  by  a  different  route 
to  Constance  and  the  Rhine.  It  was 
the  memorable  year  1790,  and  they 
landed  in  France  on  the  eve  of  the  day 
when  the  whole  nation,  with  a  sense  of 
triumph,  was  to  receive  the  King's  oath 
of  fidelity  to  the  Constitution.  Even 
Calais  was  lighted  up  by  the  general 
exhilaration  of  that  summer  hour ,  for, 
in  the  traveler's  words, 

"There  we  saw, 

In  a  mean  city,  and  among  a  few, 
How  bright  a  face  is  worn  when  joy  of  one 
Is  joy  for  tens  of  millions." 

The  general  animation  attended 
them  as  they  journeyed  through  the 
country  in  that  new-born  light  of  lib- 
erty, hailed  by  our  poet,  in  common 
with  so  many  noble  minds  of  the  pe- 
riod, as  the  life  and  regeneration  of 
Europe.  The  very  spirit  of  the  time 
breathes  again  in  a  scene  so  graphi- 
cally described  by  the  poet  in  "The 
Prelude." 

But  a  shadow  was  cast  over  the  time, 
as  the  travelers  passed  onward  to  the 
Convent  of  Chartreuse,  and  its  awful 
solitude,  about  to  be  invaded  by  a 
band  of  revolutionary  destroyers.  The 
poet,  whose  Protestantism,  unlike  that 
of  Milton,  never  failed  in  appreciation 


of  what  was  excellent  in  Roman  Cath- 
olic devotion,  keenly  felt  the  crime  oi 
this  unhallowed  and  unprovoked  pro- 
ceeding;  and  he  has  traced  with  no 
grudging  hand  the  sanctities  and  sen- 
sibilities, the  aids  to  humanity  of  such 
institutions. 

It  would  be  vain  here  to  attempt  to 
pursue  the  poet  through  the  influences 
and  associations  of  this  tour.  A  more 
particular  account  of  the  journey, 
especially  in  relation  to  the  scen- 
ery of  the  regions  visited,  may  be 
found  by  the  reader  in  the  elaborate 
poem  entitled,  "Descriptive  Sketch- 
es taken  during  a  pedestrian  tour 
among  the  Alps,"  written  by  Words- 
worth within  a  year  or  two  after  his 
return. 

Leaving  Cambridge  in  January,  1791, 
with  the  degree  of  Bachelor  of  Arts, 
Wordsworth  passed  several  months  in 
London,  followed  by  a  pedestrian  tour 
with  his  friend  Jones  in  Wales.  His 
residence  in  the  metropolis  furnished 
the  theme  of  an  entire  book  of  "The 
Prelude  "  —  a  delightful  picturesque 
narrative,  full  of  youthful  wonder,  the 
common  incidents  of  city  life  striking 
his  sense  as  only  a  poetical  mind  can 
appreciate  them.  Being  still  without 
a  fixed  purpose  in  life,  and  unwilling 
to  take  holy  orders,  as  some  of  his  rela- 
tives urged  him,  in  the  month  of  No- 
vember, he  set  out  alone  for  France, 
with  the  intention  of  passing  the  win- 
ter at  Orleans.  On  this,  his  second 
visit,  he  found  the  country  more  deep- 
ly involved  in  the  perils  of  the  Revo- 
lution, on  the  eve  of  its  more  sangui- 
nary epoch.  His  course  lying  through 
Paris,  he  visited  all  objects  of  recent  oi 
present  interest,— 


WILLIAM  WORDSWORTH. 


"  From  the  field  of  Mars 
Down  to  the  suburbs  of  St.  Anthony, 
And   from   Mont  Martyr    southward   to  the 
Dome  of  Geiievieve." 

saw  the  revolutionary  power  surg- 
ing in  "  the  clamorous  halls "  of  the 

o 

National  Synod  and  the  Jacobins,  and 
watched  with  keen  inspection  the 
motley  rout,  observing  the  passions 
blended  with  the  gaiety  of  the  time. 

At  Orleans,  where  he  spent  some 
time,  he  became  acquainted  with  a 
band  of  military  officers,  with  whom 
he  entertained  the  hopes  and  aspira- 
tions of  the  day ;  and  he  has  recorded 
in  particular  his  intimacy  with  the 
philosophic  soldier,  Beaupere,  their 
discussions  of  social  questions  and  their 
longings  for  human  welfare  in  all  no- 
bleness and  simplicity  of  living.  We 
have  some  vivid  glimpses  also  of  the 
royalists,  as  yet  undecided  in  the  re- 
publican ranks,  particularly  of  one 
powerfully  moved  at  the  reception  of 
the  ill-omened  reports  from  the  capital. 

"  While  he  read, 

Or  mused,  his  sword  was  haunted  by  his  touch 
Continually,  like  an  uneasy  place 
In  his  own  body." 

Wordsworth  passed,  in  the  succeed- 
ing spring,  to  Blois,  where  news  came 
to  him  of  the  civil  slaughter  in  the 
capital;  and,  shortly  after  the  massa- 
cre of  September,  was  again  in  Paris, 
where  the  recent  events  wrought  upon 
him,  in  his  solitary  lodging, 

<!  Until  I  seemed  to  hear  a  voice  that  cried, 
To  the  whole  city,  '  Sleep  no  more.' " 

He  fortunately  left  the  place  in  time 
to  escape  a  personal  experience  of  the 
horrors  of  the  Reign  of  Terror ;  for  he 
was  intimately  associated  with  the 


Girondists,  and,  had  he  remained,  would 
doubtless  have  received  the  attentions 
of  Robespierre  and  his  cruel  associates. 
Returning  to  England  at  the  close 
of  1792,  he  became  more  perplexed 
than  ever  in  considering  his  future 
prospects.  Of  the  prof  essions,the  church 
and  the  law  stood  open  to  him,  but 
neither  suited  his  disposition.  Litera- 
ture, at  least  in  the  cultivation  of  his 
poetic  faculty,  promised  little.  The 
"Descriptive  Sketches"  already  allud- 
ed to,  which  he  now  published  in 
London,  attracted  but  little  attention, 
the  greatest  gain  which  he  received 
from  the  work  beincr  the  admiration  of 

O 

Coleridge,  who  fell  in  with  the  volume 
at  Cambridge,  and  hailed  "  the  emer- 
gence of  an  original  poetic  genius 
above  the  literary  horizon."  But  the 
press  seemed  to  offer  a  more  immediate 
means  of  support.  In  the  spring  of 
1794,  while  resident  with  one  of  his 
relatives  in  the  country,  he  proposed 
to  his  friend  Mathews,  in  London,  the 
project  of  a  monthly  miscellany,  with 
the  title  "The  Philanthropist,"  to 
which  he  would  contribute  articles  on 
literature  and  politics,  embodying  his 
liberal  views  on  society.  This  scheme 
failing,  he  was  about  seeking  employ- 
ment as  a  writer  for  one  of  the  opposi- 
tion newspapers  of  the  day,  when  an 
event  occurred,  which,  with  his  econom- 
ical habits,  placed  him  at  ease  in  refer- 
ence to  pecuniary  support,  and  left  him 
free  to  employ  his  faculties  in  the  way 
most  agreeable  to  his  inclinations.  This 
was  a  legacy  of  nine  hundred  pounds, 
bequeathed  to  him  by  his  friend  Rais« 
ley  Calvert,  whose  companion  he  had 
been  in  his  last  illness.  The  act,  W  ords« 
worth  tells  us,  "  was  done  entirely  from 


WILLIAM  WOKDSWORTH. 


551 


a  confidence  on  his  part,  that  I  had 
powers  and  attainments  which  might 
be  of  use  to  mankind."  In  after  years, 
the  poet  recalled  the  gift  in  a  noble 
sonnet,  dedicated  to  the  memory  of  his 
benefactor;  and  he  has  also  in  "The 
Prelude  "  recorded  the  circumstance  as 
an  important  event  in  his  career. 

The  subsequent  payment  of  the  debt 
due  his  father's  estate  by  Lord  Low- 
ther,  the  successor  of  Lord  Lonsdale, 
still  further  secured  the  independence 
of  the  poet.  In  the  autumn  of  1795 
we  find  him  living,  with  his  sister,  at 
Racedown  Lodge,  near  Crewkerne,  in 
Dorsetshire — he  always  chose  rural 
residences — where,  amidst  its  pleasant 
scenery,  he  devoted  himself  anew  to 
poetical  composition.  Here  he  wrote 
his  poem  entitled  "  Guilt  and  Sorrow ; 
or  Incidents  upon  Salisbury  Plain," 
and  his  tragedy,  "The  Borderers;" 
and  here  he  was  visited  by  his  asso- 
ciate in  genius  and  companion  in  fame, 
Samuel  Taylor  Coleridge,  like  himself, 
then  just  entering  upon  his  literary 
career.  The  guest  recited  a  large  por- 
tion of  his  tragedy  of  "  Osorio,"  the 
title  of  which  was  subsequently 
changed  to  "Remorse,"  and  Words- 
worth replied  by  reading  the  "Bor- 
derers," which  he  had  just  finished. 
Mutual  admiration  and  regard  were  at 
once  fixed  in  a  lasting  friendship.  To 
be  alongside  of  his  friend,  who  then 
lived  near  the  village  of  Nether- 
Stowey,  in  Somersetshire,  Wordsworth 
changed  his  residence  to  a  house  at 
Alfoxden,  in  that  vicinity,  a  fine  old 
mansion,  surrounded  by  woods  and 
vales,  and  within  two  miles  of  the  sea. 
Here,  and  in  their  walks  in  the  neigh- 
borhood, the  two  poets  held  high  con- 


verse on  the  themes  of  poetry  and 
philosophy,  and  one  day  they  were 
joined  by  the  celebrated  political  agi- 
tator, Thelwall,  who  came  to  visit 
Coleridge — a  man  of  many  acquire- 
ments, ever  a  student,  who  had  pub- 
lished poetry  in  his  youth,  and  after 
his  trial  and  acquittal  on  a  charge  of 
high  treason,  had  now  withdrawn  from 
public  life.  His  previous  reputation 
as  a  reformer,  however,  kept  the  eyes 
of  the  authorities  upon  him,  and  his 
movements  in  Somersetshire  were 
carefully  observed.  His  apparent  in- 
timacy with  Coleridge  and  Words- 
worth drew  suspicion  upon  them,  aiid 
a  government  spy  was  at  hand  to 
watch  their  proceedings.  Hiding  him- 
self behind  a  bank  near  their  accus- 
tomed seat  by  the  sea-side,  he  over- 
heard the  poets  in  their  conversation, 
frequently  talking  of  Spinosa,  which 
he  interpreted  Spy-Nosey,  and  took  as 
a  personal  application  to  himself. 
Joining  Coleridge  on  the  road,  he 
affected  to  be  a  revolutionist,  to  draw 
out  his  opinions,  when  he  was  over- 
whelmed by  a  philosophical  tirade 
against  Jacobinism,  and  so  overcome 
by  the  poet's  eloquence,  that  the  latter 
congratulated  himself  on  the  oppor- 
tunity he  had  of  setting  to  rights  a 
disaffected  democrat.  To  the  villag- 
ers, Wordsworth,  with  his  solitary 
walks  and  muttered  soliloquies,  ap» 
peared  much  the  more  probable  con 
spirator  of  the  two.  Coleridge  was 
too  loquacious  to  be  suspected.  In 
the  case  of  Wordsworth,  according  to 
the  account  of  Joseph  Cottle,  as  it  was 
related  to  him,  half  quizzically,  by 
Ooleridge,  his  peculiar  ways  were  so 
little  understood,  and  he  became  the 


552 


WILLIAM  WORDSWOKTH. 


subject  of  so  much  idle  misrepresenta- 
tion, that  the  ignorant  dolt  who  had 
the  letting  of  the  Alfoxden  dwelling, 
at  the  end  of  the  year,  refused  to 
renew  the  lease  to  so  equivocal  a  per- 
sonage. "The  wiseacres  of  the  village 
had,  it  seemed,  made  Wordsworth  the 
subject  of  their  serious  conversation. 
One  said  that  *  he  had  seen  him  wander 
about  by  night,  and  look  rather 
strangely  at  the  moon !  and  then  he 
roamed  over  the  hills  like  a  partridge.' 
Another  said  '  he  had  heard  him  mut- 
ter, as  he  walked,  in  some  outlandish 
brogue,  that  nobody  could  understand.' 
Another  said,  'it's  useless  to  talk, 
Thomas,  I  think  he  is  what  people  call 
a  wise  man — a  conjuror.'  Another 
said :  '  You  are  every  one  of  you 
wrong.  I  know  what  he  is.  We  have 
all  met  him  tramping  aAvay  toward 
the  sea.  Would  any  man  in  his  sen- 
ses, take  aH  that  trouble  to  look  at  a 
parcel  of  \\  ater  ?  I  think  he  carries 
on  a  snug  business  in  the  smuggling 
line,  and,  in  these  journeys,  is  on  the 
look-out  for  a  wet  cargo  ? '  Another 
very  significantly  said :  'I  know  that 
he  has  got  a  private  still  in  his  cellar, 
for  I  once  passed  his  house,  at  a  little 
better  than  a  hundred  yards  distance, 
and  I  could  smell  the  spirits,  as  plain 
as  an  ashen  fagot  at  Christmas ! ' 
Another  said,  *  However  that  was,  he  is 
surely  a  despard  French  Jacobin,  for  he 
is  so  silent  and  dark,  that  nobody  ever 
heard  him  say  one  word  about  politics  !' 
And  thus  these  ignoramuses  drove 
from  their  village  a  greater  ornament 
than  will  ever  again  be  found  amongst 
them."* 

*  Cottle's    Reminiscences  of    Coleridge  and 
Bouthey     Am.  ed.,  137. 


However  all  this  may  have  been, 
Wordsworth,  while  he  was  in  posses- 
sion of  the  premises,  made  good  use  of 
his  opportunities,  in  turning  the  nature 
about  him  to  poetical  account.  Many 
of  his  most  striking  early  poems  are 
descriptions  of  scenes  and  incidents 
observed  by  him  at  this  time  in  the 
region.  The  thorn  tree,  about  which 
he  gathered  the  piteous  circumstances 
of  the  ballad  bearing  that  name,  had 
actually  appealed  to  his  imagination 
as  he  came  upon  it  in  a  storm,  on  the 
ridge  of  Quantock  Hill ;  the  moon-lit 
sky,  which  opens  to  the  traveller's  gaze 
in  the  verses  entitled  "  A  Night  Piece," 
was  composed  by  him  extempore,  as  he 
traversed  the  road  between  him  and 
Coleridge ;  the  affecting  poem,  "  We 
are  Seven,"  so  tender  and  pathetic — a 
consolation  to  thousands  of  bereaved 
hearts — was  written  here;  and,  with 
various  others,  "  The  Idiot  Boy  " — that 
tale,  the  more  affecting  in  its  quaint 
simplicity,  separating  it  from  all  com 
mon  narratives,  had  their  inspiration 
in  the  groves  of  Alfoxden.  Some  of 
these  poems  were  composed  for  his 
publication,  the  "  Lyrical  Ballads,"  a 
collection  which  had  its  origin  under 
rather  peculiar  circumstances.  The 
poet,  in  company  with  his  sister  and 
Coleridge,  was  accustomed  to  make 
excursions  about  the  romantic  county 
bordering  on  the  sea,  in  which  they 
dwelt.  On  one  of  these  occasions, 
when  they  were  about  to  visit  Linton 
and  its  neighborhood,  to  eke  out  their 
united  funds  for  the  expenses  of  the 
journey,  the  two  poets  proposed  to 
write  a  poem,  to  be  sold  to  a  magazine 
in  London.  In  this  way  was  planned 
"  The  Ancient  Mariner."  Wordsworth, 


WIL1JLAM  WORDSWORTH. 


who  had  been  reading  in  "  Shelvocke's 
Voyages,"  a  day  or  two  before,  of  the 
huge  albatrosses  seen  about  Cape 
Horn,  suggesting  the  employment  of 
that  bird  in  the  spiritual  agency  of  the 
poem,  and  furnishing  some  of  the 
opening  lines.  The  subject,  however, 
proved  so  entirely  suitable  to  the 
peculiar  genius  of  Coleridge  that  it 
was  left  in  his  hands.  The  work,  as  it 
proceeded,  became  important  enough 
for  a  volume,  and  Wordsworth  wrote 
a  number  of  pieces  to  accompany  it, 
among  them  the  "  Lines,"  as  he  simply 
entitled  that  exquisite  philosophical, 
descriptive  poem  composed  on  revisit- 
ing Tintern  Abbey  and  the  banks  of 
the  Wye.  It  was  a  rare  book  to  con- 
tain two  such  poems,  one  at  its  begin- 
ning, the  other  at  its  close.  It  also 
included,  in  addition  to  the  poems 
written  by  Wordsworth,  at  Alfoxden, 
already  mentioned,  the  story  "  Goody 
Blake  and  Harry  Gill,"  which,  among 
other  simplicities  in  the  volume,  so 
greatly  provoked  the  wrath  of  the 
reviewers  of  that  day.  There  was, 
undoubtedly,  something  of  excess  in 
the  bluntness  with  which  the  poet,  in 
these  and  other  productions  of  a  simi- 
lar class,  which  followed,  thrust  for- 
ward the  familiar  language  and  inci- 
dents of  every-day  life — and  these, 
too,  of  the  lowest  classes,  as  the  pro- 
per language  and  themes  of  poetry. 
Spurning  the  elegant  style  of  the  day 
in  verse,  which  had  degenerated  into 
conventionalism  and  mere  sounding 
platitudes — for  the  most  part,  poor 
alike  in  execution  and  subject-matter, 
he  resolved  deliberately  to  look  for 
new  sources  of  inspiration,  in  a  closer 
study  of  nature  and  the  homely  reali- 
70 


553 

ties  of  life.  His  course,  in  this  respect, 
was  somewhat  similar  to  that  of  the 
so-called  Pre-Raphaelite  painters  of 
oar  own  day,  who,  weary  of  the  insip- 
idities of  conventional  art,  sought 
escape  from  its  vapid  generalization  in 
an  extreme  literalism,  which  sometimes 
proved  its  sincerity  at  the  expense  of 
the  necessary  qualities  of  taste  and 
judgment.  Beauty,  the  highest  object 
of  art,  was  thus  sacrificed  for  a  moral 
purpose.  For  a  time  there  seemed  a 
repugnance  between  the  two;  in  the 
end  they  were  brought  together  in 
harmony,  in  greater  strength  from  the 
temporary  separation.  Nor  was  it 
by  any  means  a  mere  question  of  style 
or  literary  expression  with  Words- 
worth. He  had,  from  the  beginning, 
a  moral  purpose  in  view.  His  poetry 
was  the  outgrowth  of  his  independent 
nature,  and  of  the  democratic  convic- 
tions which  he  keenly  felt  in  early  life, 
and  which  he  never  abandoned ;  though, 
as  he  grew  older,  he  saw  that  there 
were  means  to  reach  the  results  he 
aimed  at,  of  a  conservative  character, 
which  he  had  once  overlooked.  It  was 
not  the  man  who  was  changed ;  but 
his  system  had  become  more  compre- 
hensive. He  always,  in  fact,  repre- 
sented the  reforming  spirit  of  his  age. 
At  the  outset  we  have  seen  his  sympa- 
thy with  the  humanitarian  work  of 
the  French  revolution,  before  it  was 
corrupted  by  crime  and  bloodshed. 
His  personal  tastes,  from  the  begin- 
ning, were  very  simple.  If  he  was 
dazzled  for  a  moment  by  the  glare  of 
expense,  at  the  beginning  of  his  Uni- 
versity course,  it  was  but  to  return, 
with  the  greater  zest,  in  his  first  vaca- 
tion to  the  rude  simplicities  of  the 


554: 


WILLIAM  WORDSWORTH. 


humble  country-folk  among  whom  he 
had  been  nurtured.  This  foundation 
of  pure  natural  emotion  strengthened 
his  whole  life.  He  could  enter  heart- 
ily into  the  truths — of  all  men,  he  was 
the  least  likely  to  be  carried  away  by 
the  falsities  of  revolutionary  France. 
There  wTas  a  sound  English  element  in 
his  character,  which  acted  instinctively. 
The  first  product  in  literature  of  the 
new  reforming  spirit,  preceding  and 
attending  the  revolution  on  the  conti- 
nent, was  a  morbid  or  elegant  senti- 
mentality, represented  in  such  works 
as  the  "  Sorrows  of  Werter,"  Schiller's 
"Robbers,"  and,  in  its  milder  phrase,the 
fables  of  Gesner  and  Florian.  But  the 
Muse  of  Wordsworth  never  gave  the 
slightest  encouragement  to  the  utter- 
ance of  despair,  or  could  find  any  con- 
solation in  the  languid  shepherds  and 
shepherdesses  of  the  stage.  His  nature 
was  too  manly  for  either.  Nor,  in  his 
pursuit  of  simplicity,  did  he  ever  lose 
sight,  in  his  poetry,  of  the  paramount 
claims  of  the  imagination.  The  most 
maligned  by  the  critics  of  his  early 
works,  are  never  without  some  exercise 
of  this  quality;  while,  alongside  of  them, 
oven  in  his  early  publications,  are  to 
be  found  some  of  its  finest  examples 
in  our  English  literature.  With  the 
exception  of  a  few  wilful  or  ill-con- 
ceived passages  of  a  common  or  vulgar 
aspect,  comparatively  insignificant  in 
number,  which,  in  the  revision  of  his 
writings,  in  the  later  publications  of 
his  works,  he  mostly,  if  not  entirely, 
rejected,  Wordsworth  was  really  very 
little  of  an  innovator  in  his  poetic  lan- 
guage. His  taste  in  verse,  so  much 
objected  to,  was,  after  all,  in  the  very 
spirit  of  the  old  English  ballads, 


which,  revised  by  Bishop  Percy  in  the 
previous  generation,  brought  with 
them  a  new  breath  of  life  to  the  faded 
literature  of  the  age.  The  poet-artist, 
Blake,  preceded  Wordsworth  by  some 
years  in  the  production  of  his  "  Poetical 
Sketches,"  and  "Songs  of  Innocence 
and  Experience,"  and  stamped  the 
same  impress  of  feeling  upon  his 
verses.  There  is  one  among  them,  in 
particular,  "The  Chimney  Sweeper," 
which,  in  its  quaintness,  and  the  selec- 
tion of  the  subject,  might  have  found 
its  place  in  the  "Lyrical  Ballads."  Yet 
the  English  world,  after  long  neglect, 
has  learned  to  honor  the  visionary 
Blake  as  he  deserved ;  and  his  poems, 
when  they  were  written,  were  worthy 
of  greater  regard,  in  the  poverty  of 
original  genius  in .  that  time.  It  is 
almost  inconceivable  now,  the  spirit  of 
opposition  which  long  dogged  the  pro- 
gress of  Wordsworth.  But  the  very7 
irritation  which  he  caused  may  be 
taken  as  proof  of  his  power,  and  of  the 
weakness  of  his  opponents.  He  was 
assailed  by  them  even  with  rancorous 
spite  and  enmity,  as  if  it  had  been  the 
unpardonable  sin  to  attempt  to  des- 
cribe, in  verse,  the  lowly  sorrows  of 
suffering  peasants ;  and  a  man  was  tc 
be  ranked  with  old  women  for  writing 
about  them,  or  set  down  as  an  idiot  for 
picturing,  with  a  sense  of  humor  and 
pity,  his  inoffensive  ways.  If  Words- 
worth sinned  in  the  production  of  the 
"Lyrical  Ballads,"  a  share  of  the  pun- 
ishment should  have  been  inflicted  on 
Coleridge,  who  planned  with  him  the 
work,  and  who,  in  numerous  pages  of 
his  best  prose,  nobly  vindicated  the 
attempt.  In  the  division  of  the  task 
which  they  set  before  them,  it  was 


WILLIAM   WORDSWORTH. 


555 


Wordsworth's  part,  he  says,  "  to  pro- 
pose to  himself  as  his  object,  to  give 
the  charm  of  novelty  to  things  of  every 
day,  and  to  excite  a  feeling  analogous 
to  the  supernatural,  by  awakening  the 
mind's  attention  to  the  lethargy  of 

Ov 

custom,  and  directing  it  to  the  loveli- 
ness and  the  wonders  of  the  world 
before  us ;  an  inexhaustible  treasure, 
but  for  which,  in  consequence  of  the 
film  of  familiarity  and  selfish  solici- 
tude, we  have  eyes,  yet  see  not ;  ears 
that  hear  not,  and  hearts  that  neither 
feel  nor  understand  " — certainly  some- 
thing well  worthy  undertaking,  which 
we  may  be  thankful  there  was  a  power 
above  that  of  the  blind  critics  of  the 
day,  to  protect. 

In  one  of  its  depreciatory  articles  on 
the  poet's  works,  written  some  years 
latter,  the  "  Edinburgh  Review  "  tells 
us  that  the  "  Lyrical  Ballads  "  had  been 
" unquestionably  popular."  If  so,  the 
publisher,  who  would  doubtless  gladly 
have  welcomed  such  an  impression,  did 
not,  at  the  outset,  perceive  it.  His  ac- 
count-books told  a  different  story.  The 
work  was  published  by  Joseph  Cottle, 
at  Bristol,  in  1798 ;  the  edition  was 
but  five  hundred ;  and,  as  he  tells  us  in 
his  "  Reminiscences,"  the  "  sale  was  so 
slow,  and  the  severity  of  most  of  the 
reviews  so  great,  that  its  progress  to 
oblivion  seemed  to  be  certain."  He 
parted  with  most  of  the  impression  to 
a  London  bookseller  at  a  loss;  and, 
when,  soon  after  retiring  from  business, 
he  transferred  his  copyright  to  the 
Messrs.  Longman,  that  of  the  "  Lyrical 
Ballads  "  was  set  down  as  of  no  value ; 
and,  at  the  suggestion  of  Mr.  Cottle, 
was  readily  enough  presented  to  the 
authors.  The  publisher,  however,  had 


paid  Wordsworth  thirty  pounds  for 
his  contributions  to  the  volume,  which, 
his  residence  at  Alfoxden  being  at  an 
end,  he  invested  in  a  trip  to  Germany, 
In  company  with  his  sister  and  Cole- 
ridge, shortly  after  the  publication  of 
-the  "Ballads,"  he  sailed  in  September 
for  Hamburgh,  where  the  friends  made 
the  acquaintance  of  the  father  of  the 
revived  German  literature,  the  poet 
Klopstock ;  and  Wordsworth  had  the 
opportunity  of  informing  his  illustri- 
ous host  of  the  uses  of  the  fool  in 
Shakespeare's  tragedy  of  "  Lear."  The 
tour  lasted  some  six  months,  most  ol 
which  were  spent  by  Wordsworth  and 
his  sister  together,  in  lodgings  at  a 
draper's  house  in  the  romantic  imperial 
town  of  Goslar,  as  it  is  described  by  the 
poet,  on  the  edge  of  the  Hartz  forest- 
Coleridge,  who  had  parted  with  his  com- 
panions at  Hamburgh,  was  passing  his 
time  at  Ratzeburgh,  and  a  correspond- 
ence was  kept  up  between  them.  The 
object  of  the  travellers,  we  may  sup- 
posed, was  partly  economy;  but 
Wordsworth  and  his  sister  were  in- 
tent on  learning  the  language  of  the 
country,  for  which  Goslar  turned  out 
rather  unpropitious,  the  place  being 
inhospitable  to  strangers,  and  Words- 
worth little  given  to  j-  ashing  his  way 
into  society,  which  was,  moreover,  here 
fortified  by  almost  impenetrable  tobac- 
co smoke,  for  which  he  had  a  great 
aversion.  He  had  abundant  opportu- 
nity, however,  for  study  within  doors, 
the  excessive  cold  of  the  winter  check- 
ing his  indomitable  pedestrianism. 
"  So  severe,"  says  he,  "  was  the  cold  of 
this  winter,  that  when  we  passed  out 
of  the  parlor  warmed  by  the  stove,  our 
cheeks  were  struck  by  the  air  as  by 


550 


WILLIAM  WORDSWORTH. 


cold  iron.  I  slept  in  a  room  over  a 
passage  that  was  not  ceiled.  The  peo- 
ple of  the  house  used  to  say,  rather  un- 
feelingly, that  they  expected  I  should 
be  frozen  to  death  some  night;  but, 
with  the  protection  of  a  pelisse  lined 
with  fur,  and  a  dog's-skin  bonnet,  such 
as  was  worn  by  the  peasants,  I  walked 
daily  on  the  ramparts,  or  on  a  sort  of 
public  ground  or  garden,  in  which  was 
a  pond.  Here  I  had  no  company  but 
a  kingfisher,  a  beautiful  creature  that 
used  to  glance  by  me.  I  consequently 
became  much  attached  to  it.  During 
these  walks  I  composed  "  The  Poet's 
Epitaph." 

The  mind  is  independent  of  place. 
One  would  fancy  this  poem  to  have 
been  inspired  by  some  inmost  haunt 
of  the  poet's  retirement,  in  his  beloved 
Westmoreland,  in  the  heart  of  its  sum- 
mer English  scenery,  rather  than  under 
such  wintry  circumstances  in  frozen 
Goslar.  But  the  poet  creates  an  at- 
mosphere and  region  of  his  own,  and 
we  constantly  find  the  most  character- 
istic poems  to  have  been  written  in  the 
most  unexpected  places.  This  poem 
is  noticeable  for  its  ideal  portrait  of 
the  poet — a  sketch  from  his  own  life. 
After,  as  in  some  ancient  chant  by 
Greek  or  .Roman  priest,  warning  off 
unprepared  souls  from  access  to  the 
shrine — the  hardened  lawyer,  the  stall- 
fed  divine,  the  "fingering  slave"  of 
science,  the  self-sufficing  moralist — we 
are  admitted  to  the  sacred  poet,  while, 

"  With  modest  looks, 
And  clad  in  homely  russet  brown 
He  murmurs  near  the  running  brooks 
A  music  sweeter  than  their  own." 

The  poet's  biographer,  Bishop  Words- 
woith,   notices   how   his   mind   turns 


from  the  scene  around  him,  this  rugged 
winter,  to  his  native  England ;  and  how 
his  themes  are  drawn  from  his  early  as 
sociations,  as  he  recalls  in  touching 
strains  the  haunts  of  his  school-boy 
days  at  Esthwaite ;  the  heart  philoso 
phies  of  his  teachers,  sacred  to  memory 
as  in  that  touching  poem,  "  The  Two 
April  Mornings ; "  or  the  conversation, 
inspired  by  the  burdens  of  age,  at 
"  The  Fountain ; "  and  the  interview 
with  the  dying  Master,  and  the  long 
farewell  at  the  grave.  There,  too,  he 
wrote  that  reminiscence  of  one  of  the 
playmates  of  his  boyhood,  eminent 
among  the  thousand  pictures  of  the 
lake  scenery  for  its  clear-toned  empha- 
sis and  imaginative  beauty — lines 
which  would  have  received  the  plaud- 
its of  a  Grecian  theatre  in  the  best 
days  of  Attic  literary  fame :  the  verses 
commencing, 

' '  There  was  a  boy ;  ye  knew  him  well,  ye  cliffs 
And  islands  of  Winander!" 

Leaving  Coleridge  to  pursue  his  stu- 
dies at  Gottingen,  Wordsworth  and 
his  sister,  in  the  spring,  gladly  return- 
ed to  England,  having  their  residence 
for  a  time  with  their  friends,  the 
Hutchinsons,  at  Sockburn-on-Tees.  Re- 
viewing now  his  literary  career,  with 
the  encouragement  of  Coleridge,  he  re- 
solved upon  a  work  of  greater  magni- 
tude than  the  detached  poems  which 
had  hitherto  occupied  him.  The  pro- 
cess which  he  employed,  in  a  mercan- 
tile phrase,  "taking  stock"  of  his  in- 
tellectual faculties,  dictated  his  subject 
— "  a  record  in  verse,"  as  he  describ- 
ed it  of  "  the  origin  and  progress  of 
his  own  powers,"  which,  as  the  precur 
sor  of  a  philosophical  poem  of  wider 


WILLIAM  WOKDSWOKTH. 


557 


scope,  he  entitled  "The  Prelude."  It 
was  thus  a  species  of  autobiography, 
and  as  such  furnishes  the  most  inter- 
esting materials  for  the  poet's  history. 
The  passages  we  have  drawn  from  it 
exhibit  something  of  its  scope  and 
manner  in  the  narrative  portions ;  the 
philosphical  are  of  equal  interest.  Its 
composition  occupied  some  six  or  seven 
years;  but  it  remained  unpublished 
until  after  the  author's  death. 

In  the  autumn  of  1799,  an  excursion 
which  Wordsworth  made  into  Cum- 
berland and  Westmoreland,  in  com- 
pany with  his  sister  and  Coleridge,  led 
to  his  hiring  a  cottage  facing  the  lake, 
in  the  vale  of  Grasmere,  in  the  region 
which  thenceforward  became  his  home, 
and  with  which  he  was  to  become  so 
thoroughly  identified.  The  house  at 
Grasmere  had  formerly  been  an  inn,  and 
bore  the  name  of  "  The  Dove  and  Olive 
Bough."  Wordsworth  and  his  sister 
took  possession  of  it  on  St.  Thomas'  day 
(the  21st  of  December),  having  per- 
formed most  of  the  journey  from  Sock- 
burn  on  foot,  undeterred  by  the  severity 
of  the  winter's  cold ;  spite  of  snow  and 
tempest,  making  exhaustive  surveys  of 
the  half -frozen  waterfalls  and  scenery 
by  the  way.  Wordsworth's  enthusiasm 
for  the  minute  observation  of  nature, 
was  happily  shared  by  his  sister.  Her 
companionship  was  invaluable  to  him, 
not  only  in  her  ready  sympathy,  but  in 
the  serviceable  employment  of  her  own 
faculties.  She  was  constantly  suggest- 
ing to  him,  or  recalling  to  his  memory 
circumstances  which  he  employed  in 
his  poems,  many  of  which,  though 
composed,  would  never  have  been 
written  or  given  to  the  world  but  for 
her  ready  services  as  an  amanuensis. 


;'The   sister's  eye,"   we   are  told   by 
Bishop   Wordsworth,   "  was    ever  OB 
the  watch  to  provide  for  the  brother's 
pen.     He  had  a  most  observant  eye; 
and  she  also  saw  for  him :  and  his  po- 
ems  are   sometimes   little  more  than 
poetical  versions  of  her  descriptions  of 
the  objects  which  she  had  seen ;  and 
he  treated  them  as  seen  by  himself.' 
With   regard   to   writing,   there   was 
nothing  which    Wordsworth   at  that 
time   approached   with  greater  reluc- 
tance.   Writing  in  1803,  to  Sir  George 
Beaumont,  in  excuse  for  his  long-de- 
layed acknowledgement  of  the  gift  of 
a  beautiful  site  for  a  house  near  Kes- 
wick,  he  says :     "  I  do  not  know  from 
what  cause  it  is,  but,  during  the  last 
three  years,  I  have  never  had  a  pen  in 
my  hand  for  five  minutes,  before  my 
whole  frame  becomes  a  bundle  of  un- 
easiness; a  perspiration  starts  out  all 
over  me,  and  my  chest  is  oppressed  in 
a  manner  which  I  cannot   describe." 
With  this  idiosyncracy,  the  constant 
loving  attentions  of  his  sister  became 
indispensable.     Worthily  is  her  praise 
recorded  on  many  a  page  of  his  writ- 
ings, and  never  with  more  warmth  of 
gratitude  than  when  the  pair  came  to 
reside  together   in   the,  to   them,  en- 
chanted   mountain    lake    country    at 
Grasmere. 

A  new  person  is  now  to  join  the 
brother  and  sister  in  this  rural  scene 
and  kindly  blend  with  the  associations 
of  the  place.  In  October,  1802,  the 
poet,  his  fortunes  being  improved  by 
the  payment  of  the  Lowther  claim  al- 
ready alluded  to,  was  married  at 
Brompton  Church,  to  Mary  Hutchin- 
son,  and  brought  his  wife  home  with 
him  to  the  little  residence  at  Grasmere 


WILLIAM  WOEDSWOETH. 


This  was  an  alliance  which  came  al- 
most as  naturally  to  him  as  his  com- 
panionship, with  his  sister.  In  the 
fragment  of  autobiography  cited  at 
the  beginning  of  this  memoir,  he  tells 
us :  "  We  had  known  each  other  from 
childhood,  and  had  practised  reading 
and  spelling  under  the  same  old  dame 
at  Penrith;  a  remarkable  personage, 
who  had  taught  three  generations,  of 
the  upper  classes  principally,  of  the 
town  of  Penrith  and  its  neighbor- 
hood." In  one  of  his  college  vaca- 

~ 

tions,  when  joining  his  sister  at  Pen- 
rith, where  Mary  Hutchinson  then  re- 
sided with  her  parents,  he  had  again, 
in  company  with  his  sister,  been 
thrown  into  her  society — a  union 
which  he  has  celebrated  in  a  passage 
of  the  "  Prelude." 

There  is  in  that  classification  of  the 
poet's  works,  entitled  "  Poems  founded 
on  the  Affections,"  one  bearing  the  un- 
pretending inscription  :  "  Farewell, 
composed  in  the  year  1802."  This 
is  a  simple  leave-taking  of  the  cot- 
tage at  Grasmere,  its  little  garden  and 
flowers,  on  setting  out  upon  the  jour- 
ney, from  which  the  poet  was  to  re- 
turn bringing  his  newly-married  wife 
with  him.  It  is  a  very  tender  poem ; 
and,  as  we  read  it,  the  little  home 
seems  invested  with  a  personal  exist- 
ence, as  if  it  were  to  feel  the  privation 
in  its  occupants'  temporary  absence, 
and  be  reconciled  by  the  promised  ad- 
ditional wealth  to  be  brought  to  its 
doors. 

There  are  other  striking  allusions  to 
this  dear  companion  of  the  poet's  life, 
the  sharer  of  his  joys  arid  sorrows  for 
nearly  half  a  century;  but  the  most 
noticeable  is  the  exquisite  female  por- 


trait he  has  drawn  in  the  lines,  stand, 
ing  in  his  works  by  themselves,  with 
out  a  title,  commencing — 

"  She  was  a  phantom  of  delight 
When  first  she  gleamed  upon  my  sight." 

In  the  mean  time,  the  production  of 
new  poems  at  Grasmere  was  going  on 
apace.  In  addition  to  the  work  on 
the  "  Prelude,"  various  pastoral,  de- 
scriptive, and  narrative  verses  were 
added  to  the  stock  which,  at  the  close 
of  the  year  1800,  were  given  to  the 
world  in  a  new  issue  of  the  "  Lyrical 
Ballads,"  now  extended  to  two  vol- 
umes. Besides  several  poems  which 
we  have  mentioned  as  written  since 
the  former  publication,  the  collection 
included  the  idyllic  poem,  "  The  Bro- 
thers"— in  its  simple  dialogue  and 
unaffected  heart-utterances,  not  unre- 
lieved by  quaint  touches  of  character, 
as  in  the  querulousness  of  the  clergy- 
man so  soon  ending  in  sympathy,  a 
foretaste  of  similar  scenes  in  the  "  Ex- 
cursion;" the  ballad  story  of  Ruth, 
with  its  pictures  of  our  own  Southern 
scenery ;  the  tale  of  the  shepherd  life 
of  "  Michael,"  with  its  heartfelt  grief, 
that  broken  pledge  of  duty  and  affec- 
tion at  the  sheepfold,  forgotten  by  the 
son,  bringing  the  old  man  in  sorrow  to 
the  grave ;  and  that  fine  study  of  de- 
crepid  humanity,  "The  Old  Cumber- 
land Beggar,"  with  its  plea  for  the 
natural,  as  opposed  to  the  crushing 
economic  charities  of  poor-house  re- 
lief. 

In  these  and  kindred  poems  there 
was  a  natural  fervor  and  eloquence, 
which,  spite  of  critics,  found  its  way 
to  the  hearts  of  the  people.  Though 
the  publishers,  Messrs.  Longman,  did 


WILLIAM  WOKDSWOKTH. 


559 


not  feel  themselves  justified  in  offering 
more  than  a  hundred  pounds  for  two 
editions  of  the  enlarged  work,  yet  the 
poem's  "  fit  audience  "  found  and  pre- 
pared the  way  for  greater  successes. 
A  new  edition  was  called  for  in  1802, 
and  another  in  1805.  The  next  publi- 
cation by  Wordsworth  appeared  in 
1807,  simply  entitled,  "Poems  in  Two 
Volumes ;"  a  gathering  up  of  his  com- 
positions during  the  previous  seven 
years.  It  includes  some  of  his  best 
known  and  most  admired  writings, 
realizing  the  old  poet  Withers  saying, 
in  his  Address  to  his  Muse : 

"  If  thy  verse  do  bravely  tower, 
As  she  makes  wing,  she  gets  power  : 
Yet  the  higher  she  doth  soar, 
She's  affronted  still  the  more, 
Till  she  to  the  high'st  hath  past, 
Then  she  rests  with  fame  at  last." 

In  such  productions  as  the  "  Char- 
acter of  the  Happy  Warrior ;"  the  no- 
ble "Sonnets  dedicated  to  Liberty;" 
the  "  Ode  to  Duty/'  and  the  ode,  "  In- 
timations of  Immortality,  from  Recol- 
lections of  Early  Childhood,"  the  poet 
was  indeed  approaching  his  highest; 
yet  an  Edinburgh  Reviewer,  with 
these  and  other  like  evidences  of  ge- 
nius and  consummate  art  before  him, 
could  write  of  these  volumes:  "The 
diction  of  Mr.  Wordsworth  has  no- 
where any  pretensions  to  elegance  or 
dignity ;  and  he  has  scarcely  ever  con- 
descended to  give  the  grace  of  correct- 
ness or  melody  to  his  versification." 
The  "  Ode  to  Duty  "  in  this  article,  in 
which  the  stupidity  is  only  equalled 
by  its  insolence,  is  pronounced  "  a  very 
unsuccessful  attempt  at  the  lofty 
vein ;"  and  the  ode  on  "  Immortality," 
'beyond  all  doubt  the  most  illegible  and 


unintelligible  part  of  the  publication. 
We  can  pretend  to  give  no  analysis  or 
explanation  of  it;  our  readers  must 
make  what  they  can  of  the  following 
extracts "  —  one  of  them  being  the 
passage  embracing  that  train  of 
thought,  beautifully  expressed  in 
similitude,  connecting  man's  existence 
with  the  infinite  life  before  and  after, 
looking  upon  which 

"  Our  noisy  years. seem  moments  in  the  being 
Of  the  eternal  science  ;  truths  that  wake 

To  perish  never  ; 
Which  neither  listlessness,  nor  mad  endeavor 

Nor  man,  nor  boy, 
Nor  all  that  is  at  enmity  with  joy, 
Can  utterly  abolish  or  destroy  ! 
Hence,  in  a  season  of  calm  weather, 

Though  inland  far  we  be, 
Our  souls  have  sight  of  that  immortal  sea 
Which  brought  us  hither, 

Can  in  a  moment  travel  thither, 
And  see  the  children  sport  upon  the  shore, 
And  hear  the  mighty  waters  rolling  evermore. " 

Was  it  nothing  for  the  poet  to  write 
in  such  a  strain  as  this  the  noblest  ode 
of  modern  times ;  to  revive  in  English 
literature  those  powers  of  the  sonnet 
consecrated  by  the  genius  of  the 
world's  elder  bards,  vindicated  not 
less  by  his  own  creative  genius  than 
by  their  example  2  Listen  to  his 
plea : — 

"Scorn    not    the    sonnet;     critic,    you    have 

frowned, 

Mindless  of  its  just  honors  ;  with  this  key 
Shakspeare  unlocked  his  heart  ;  the  melody 
Of  this  small  lute  gave  ease  to  Petrarch's 

wound ; 

A  thousand  times  this  pipe  did  Tasso  sound  ; 
Camoens  soothed  with  it  an  exile's  grief  ; 
The  sonnet  glittered  a  gay  myrtle  leaf 
Amid  the  cypress  with  which  Dante  crowned 
His  visionary  brow  :  a  glow-worm  lamp, 
It  cheered  mild  Spenser,  called  from  Fairy-land 
To  struggle  through  dark  ways  ;  and,  when  a 

damp. 
Fell  round  the  path  of  Milton,  in  his  band 


560 


WILLIAM  WORDSWORTH. 


The  thing  became  a  trumpet,  whence  he  blew 
Soul-animating  strains  -alas,  too  few  !" 

And  then  see  in  his  writings,  justify- 
ing these  references  to  his  predecessors, 
how  elastic  a  medium  he  made  the 
sonnet  in  the  utterance  of  kindling 
thoughts  of  self-culture,  philanthro- 
py, or  patriotism,  of  tender  inspira- 
tions of  affection  ;  embalming  personal 
and  historic  incidents  in  this  imperish- 
able amber  of  pure  verse,  and  giving 
breath  in  its  softened  cadences  to  the 
gentlest  inspirations  of  nature.  Were 
all  of  Wordsworth's  writings  to  per- 
ish, save  his  sonnets,  he  would  still  be 
one  of  the  most  illustrious  poets  of 
his  age. 

But  the  new  volumes  have  other 
claims  upon  our  admiration.  They 
contain  that  wondrous  "  Song  at  the 
Feast  of  Brougham  Castle,"  celebrat- 
ing the  restoration  of  Lord  Clifford, 
the  shepherd,  to  the  estates  and  honors 
of  his  ancestors — a  poem  founded  on 
historic  incidents,  surviving  in  the 
scenery  and  ruins  of  his  region,  de- 
lightful as  a  narrative  poem,  but  ris- 
ing to  the  dignity  of  the  ode  as  it  is 
suffused  throughout  with  the  warm 
glow  of  the  imagination.  We  are 
transported  to  the  wars  of  the  Red 
and  White  Roses,  in  the  vicissitudes 
of  which  the  exiled  Clifford  is  nur- 
tured in  an  ideal  peasant  land,  yet  not 
very  far  from  the  old  English  life,  to 
return,  instructed  by  adversity,  to  the 
home  of  his  ancestors.  Every  line  of 
the  minstrel's  song  in  this  ballad  rings 
with  the  stirring  excitements  of  the 
period. 

A  distinct  portion  of  the  work  was 
also  assigned  to  "  Poems  Written  dur- 
ing a  Tour  in  Scotland."  This  was 


the  first  of  several  journeys  in  that 
region  which  gave  occasion  to  separate 
series  of  the  author's  poetical  compo- 
sitions. The  tour  was  accomplished 
in  the  months  of  August  and  Septem- 
ber, 1803,  Wordsworth  and  his  sister 
travelling  together,  and  being  for  a 
portion  of  the  time  accompanied  by 
Coleridge.  In  the  poet's  biography 
there  is  a  delightful  account  of  the  in- 
cidents by  the  way,  in  a  journal  kept 
by  Miss  Wordsworth.  One  of  the 
most  interesting  circumstances  was  the 
meeting,  for  the  first  time,  of  Words- 
worth with  Walter  Scott,  at  the  cot- 
tage of  the  latter  at  Lasswade,  and 
subsequently  at  Melrose  and  its  vicin- 
ity. The  Scottish  poet  exhibited  his 
usual  qualities  of  frankness  and  hospi- 
tality and  cheerful  enjoyment  of  life, 
which  were  keenly  appreciated  by  his 
visitor;  and  the  acquaintance  thus 
formed  between  them  ripened  into 
friendship  as  they  advanced,  though 
with  unequal  degrees  of  popular  favor 
in  their  literary  careers.  Three  years 
later,  Scott  and  his  wife  visited  the 
Lake  Country  of  England,  when 
Wordsworth  accompanied  them  over 
some  of  its  finest  scenery.  Twenty 
years  later,  Scott  was  again  with 
Wordsworth  at  Mount  Rydal ;  and  in 
1831,  on  the  eve  of  Scott's  departure 
for  Italy,  seeking  restoration  of  his 
health,  Wordsworth  paid  him  a  fare- 
well  visit  at  Abbotsford,  commemo- 
rated in  a  sonnet  of  great  beauty  and 
feeling. 

Nor  less  noticeable  than  this  friend- 
ship with  Scott,  on  his  first  tour  in 
Scotland,  was  Wordsworth's  expression 
of  sympathy  with  the  genius  and  fate 
of  Burns.  The  peasant  bard  of  Scot 


WILLIAM   WORDSWORTH. 


land,  in  all  his  better  qualities,  — 
and  they  constituted  nearly  the  whole 
man, — was  a  being  after  Wordsworth's 
own  heart — manly,  independent,  scorn- 
ing conventionalism,  drawing  his  in- 
spiration from  the  common  life  around 
him,  and  elevating  it,  by  his  "  so  po- 
lent  art,"  into  the  most  consummate 
products  of  literature.  Burns  had 
then  not  been  long  dead ;  and  his 
death  had  occurred  under  painful  cir- 
cumstances of  intemperance,  which 
thrust  themselves  prominently  into 
view  when  people,  especially  rigid 
moralists,  thought  of  the  man.  See- 
ing the  mists  and  clouds  which  beset 
his  path,  preachers  and  biographers 
seemed  forgetful  of  his  meridian 
brightness.  Too  much  was  said  of 
"  poor  "  Burns  ;  too  little  of  the  good, 
genial,  illustrious  Burns.  But  Words- 
worth approached  his  grave  with  dif- 
ferent feelings,  as  he  thought  of  the 
iebt  which  he  owed  to  his  genius, 
and  the  qualities  which  he  would 
gladly  have  welcomed  in  the  friend. 

Years  after,  in  1815,  when  Words- 
worth was  consulted  by  a  gentleman 
of  Edinburgh,  John  Gray,  as  to  the 
proper  mode  of  vindicating  the  mem- 
ory of  Burns,  in  view  of  the  republi- 
cation  of  Dr.  Currie's  "  Life  and  Cor- 
respondence "  of  the  poet,  he  publish- 
ed an  essay  on  the  subject,  entitled 
u  A  Letter  to  a  friend  of  Robert  Burns," 
in  which  he  deprecated  any  further 
exposure  of  his  errors,  or  dwelling  up- 
on his  imperfections,  as  unfriendly  to 
the  best  interests  of  his  readers.  The 
paper  is  instinct  with  a  profound  phil- 
osophy in  the  study  of  human  nature ; 
and  it  is  to  be  regretted,  that,  originally 
appearing  in  a  very  small  edition,  it  has 
71 


not  since  been  included  in  any  collec- 
tion of  the  poet's  writings.  "  Only  to 
philosophy,"  says  he,  in  this  great  les- 
son of  charity, "  enlightened  by  the  affec- 
tions, does  it  belong  justly  to  estimate 
the  claims  of  the  deceased  on  the  one 
hand,  and  of  the  present  and  future 
generations  on  the  other,  and  to  strike 
a  balance  between  them."  The  reader 
will  remark  in  this  essay,  the  strong, 
sinewy,  elastic  English  prose  style, 
as  remarkable  in  our  author  as  his 
poetic  composition.  He  was  like  his 
predecessor,  Dryden,  an  admirable 
master  in  this  walk,  as  well  as  his 
rival  in  the  artful  cadences  of  his  best 
versification.  Wordsworth's  prose 
writings  are  well  worthy  of  study,  and 
should  be  made  accessible  to  the  pub- 
lic in  a  separate  collection.  His  prefaces 
to  his  poems  are  especially  prominent  for 
their  philosophical  criticism ;  and  there 
is  an  admirable  political  essay  which 
he  published  in  1809,  on  "The  Rela- 
tions  of  Great  Britain,  Spain,  and  Por- 
tugal, as  affected  by  the  Convention  of 
Cintra,  the  whole  brought  to  the  test 
of  those  principles  by  which  alone  the 
independence  of  freedom  of  nations 
can  be  preserved  or  recovered,"  which 
Canning  pronounced  "  the  most  elo- 
quent production  since  the  days  of 
Burke."  Wordsworth  also  contribu- 
ted a  paper  or  two  to  "  Coleridge's 
Friend,"  which  was  written  at  his  house 
at  Grasmere,  and  is  the  author  of  "  A 
Guide  through  the  District  of  the 
Lakes  in  the  North  of  England,"  a 
rare  production  among  books  of  this 
class. 

Returning  to  the  domestic  history 
of  the  poet,  we  find  the  little  house- 
hold at  Grasmere  visited  by  the  usua? 


562 


WILLIAM  WORDSWORTH. 


vicissitudes  of  joy  and  sorrow.  In 
June,  1803,  his  eldest  son,  John,  is 
born ;  and  in  August  of  the  following 
year,  on  the  birth-day  of  her  mother, 
his  daughter,  Dora,  an  event  in  a  few 
months  followed  by  the  loss  of  his 
brother,  Captain  Wordsworth,  in  the 
wreck  of  his  ship  on  the  English  Coast, 
— "  my  ever-dear  brother,"  of  whom  he 
writes  to  Sir  George  Beaumont,  "  I  can 
say  nothing  higher  than  that  he  was 
worthy  of  his  sister,  who  is  now  weep- 
ing beside  me,  and  of  the  friendship  of 
Coleridge ;  meek,  affectionate,  silently 
enthusiastic,  loving  all  quiet  things, 
and  a  poet  in  everything  but  words." 
Three  other  children  were  born  to  him, 
Thomas,  in  1806;  Catharine,  in  1808, 
and  William,  in  1810.  Of  this  family 
only  two  sons  survived  him.  Thomas 
and  Catharine  died  in  1812.  Dora,  in 
1841,  was  married  to  the  son  of  an 
English  merchant  in  Portugal,  Edward 
Quillinan,  whose  early  life  was  passed 
in  the  army,  and  who  has  some  asso- 
ciation with  literature,  not  only  as  an 
author,  but  by  his  connection  with  Sir 
Egerton  Brydges,  whose  daughter  was 
his  first  wife.  He  was  long  intimate 
with  the  Wordsworth  family,  and  an 
ardent  appreciator  of  the  poet's  genius. 
His  wife  Dora,  in  1845,  visited  Portu- 
gal with  him  for  the  restoration  of  her 
health,  and  published,  on  her  return,  an 
account  of  the  tour,  in  two  volumes,  ded- 
icated to  her  father,  entitled  "  Journal 
of  a  few  months'  Residence  in  Portugal, 
and  Glimpses  of  the  South  of  Spain." 
She  died  in  1847.  The  poet's  son;  John, 
was  educated  at  Oxford,  and  became  a 
clergyman  of  the  Church  of  England. 
William,  the  younger  son,  studied  at 
Heidelberg,  and  was  subsequently  as- 


sociated with  his  father  in  his  office  of 
distributor  of  stamps. 

Having  thus  traced  the  formati\o 
influences  of  the  poet's  career,  it  is  un- 
necessary here  to  pursue  minutely  the 
progress  of  his  later  writings.  One  of 
his  publications  stands  out  with  pecu- 
liar prominence,  though  in  reality  it 
does  not  differ  essentially  from  the 
rest.  "  The  Excursion,"  the  second 
part  of  the  grand  philosophical  poem, 
of  which  "  The  Prelude  "  was  the  first, 
and  which  was  to  bear  in  its  en- 
tirety the  name  of  "The  Recluse," 
was  published  in  the  summer  of  1814 ; 
and  may  be  considered,  rather  from  its 
extent  than  quality,  great  as  its  merits 
are,  the  most  important  exhibition  of 
his  poetic  and  philosophical  system. 
Much  has  been  written  by  Coleridge 
and  others,  as  well  as  by  himself,  con- 
cerning his  theories ;  but  the  reader 
who  is  indisposed  to  critical  enquiries, 
may  pass  these  discussions  over,  ad- 
mirable as  they  are,  as  by  no  means 
indispensable  to  an  adequate  enjoy- 
ment of  the  poems.  In  truth,  their 
philosophy  is  very  simple.  There 
is  nothing  in  "  The  Excursion  "  which 
a  mind  of  ordinary  intelligence  and 
sensibility  cannot  readily  learn  to 
appreciate  ;  and  the  word  "  learn  "  is 
used  advisedly, — for  Wordsworth,  in 
common  with  the  great  masters  of  po- 
etry, is  a  teacher  of  the  world.  It  is 
the  charm  in  this  respect  of  his  writ- 
ings, that  their  meaning  is  not  readily 
exhausted ;  that  they  appeal  rather  to 
the  wisdom  of  age  than  the  passions  of 
youth ;  that,  while  they  reflect  the  ten- 
derest  sympathy  with  all  periods  of 
life,  they  are  more  peculiarly  apprecia- 
ted, to  borrow  an  expression  of  their 


WILLIAM  WOKDSWOKTH. 


503 


author,  in  those  "  years  that  bring  the 
philosophic  mind."  In  the  "  Excur- 
sion "  particularly,  we  have  that  calm 
survey  of  life,  instinct  with  imagina- 
tive sympathy  and  transcendental  emo- 
tion, which  blends  the  results  of  ordi- 
nary experience  with  the  more  tender 
graces  and  profounder  insight  of  poetic 
culture.  The  story  is  told,  diversified 
in  numerous  examples,  of  the  cares  and 
sorrows  dogging  our  poor  human  life, 
which  is  exalted  as  our  thoughts  are 
refined,  by  a  submissive  Christian  ap- 
preciation of  the  common  lot,  not  un- 
visited  by  glimpses,  as  the  sun  breaks 
through  the  parted  clouds,  of  the  Heav- 
en beyond.  In  this  great  poem,  as  with 
Chaucer's  "  Nun,"  Madame  Eglantine, 
"  all  is  conscience  and  tender  heart." 
The  charity  is  inexhaustible,  unlimited. 
All  nature  is  made  a  witness,  in  her 
myriad  forms  of  life,  to  the  grand 
truth  of  man's  welfare  and  security  in 
his  spiritual  existence,  triumphant  over 
sense  and  matter,  wrapped  in  the  love 
and  cognizance  of  Deity.  We  are  taught 
by  this  great  Christian  moralist  our 
dependence  upon  one  another,  our  de- 
pendence upon  God.  To  these  great 
truths,  all  else  in  Wordsworth's  writ- 
ings is  subsidiary,  the  thousand  graces 
and  ornaments  of  expression,  the  love 
of  childhood,  and  the  sympathy  with 
age,  the  eye  responsive  to  the  beauty 
of  the  flower,  the  ear  drinking  the 
melodies  of  air,  the  feeling  heart  cher- 
ishing in  its  embrace  alike  the  inani- 
mate and  animated  life  of  this  heaven- 
created  world. 

It  need  not  be  said  that  Words- 
worth's greatest  poem  is  "  The  Excur- 
sion ; "  for  all  his  poetical  writings 
form  one  great  poem.  The  two  works, 


says  he,  the  "  Prelude  "  and  the  "  Ex- 
cursion," have  "  the  same  kind  of  rela- 
tion to  each  other,  if  he  may  so  express 
himself,  as  the  ante-chapel  and  the 
body  of  a  Gothic  church.  Continuing 
this  allusion,  he  may  be  permitted  to 
add,  that  his  minor  Pieces,  when  they 
shall  be  properly  arranged,  will  be 
found  by  the  attentive  reader  to  have 
such  connection  with  the  main  work 
as  may  give  them  claim  to  be  likened 
to  the  little  cells,  oratories  and  sepul- 
chral recesses,  ordinarily  included  in 
those  edifices."  If  there  is  anything 
faulty  in  this  illustration,  it  is  that  it 
does  not  seem  at  first  to  include  the 
most  pervading  characteristic  of  the 
poems,  their  out-of-door  life  and  vital- 
ity. They  were  composed,  almost 
without  exception,  in  the  open  air,  as 
even  his  servant,  at  Rydal,  knew ;  for 
once,  being  asked  by  a  stranger  to  be 
shown  the  poet's  study,  she  replied,  as 
she  showed  one  of  the  rooms :  "  This 
is  my  master's  library,  where  he  keeps 
his  books,  but  his  study  is  out  of 
doors."  The  verses  were  generally 
murmured  to  the  hills  and  gales  which 
inspired  them,  before  they  were  re- 
cited  to  the  kind  members  of  his  fam- 
ily, who  wrote  them.  down.  The 
arrangement,  alluded  to  by  the  poet, 
was  afterwards  made  ;  and  the  poems, 
as  they  are  now  printed  in  the  stand- 
ard editions,  are  classified  partly  ac- 
cording to  the  periods  of  life  which 
they  represent ;  partly  by  the  pre- 
dominant exercise  of  the  faculties,  as 
of  fancy  or  imagination  involved  in 
their  composition ;  partly  by  their 
moral  relations,  and  in  groups,  accord- 
ing to  the  several  subjects. 

As  essential  to  even  a  general  his 


564 


WILLIAM  WOEDSWOETH. 


tory  of  the  poet's  writings,  a  word 
must  be  given  to  the  reception  of  The 
"Excursion."  The  book,  at  the  time 
of  its  publication,  was  in  advance  of 
fche  taste  of  the  public ;  and,  indeed,  is 
not  of  the  class  which  ever  becomes 
widely  popular  on  the  instant.  Jeff- 
rey probably  expressed  the  common 
impression,  when  he  commenced  his 
memorable  review  of  the  work,  in  the 
"  Edinburgh,"  with  the  dogmatic  sen- 
tence :  "  This  will  never  do !  "  To 
which  Southey  replied,  on  hearing  it 
stated  that  the  arch  critic  had  "  crushed 
'The  Excursion,'  — "He  crush  'The 
Excursion.'  Tell  him  he  might  as  well 
fancy  that  he  could  crush  Skiddaw." 
Yet  for  a  time  the  critics  seemed  to 
triumph.  The  poem,  indeed,  in  sin- 
cere and  cultivated  minds,  found  "  fit " 
audience ;  but,  as  in  the  -case  of  Milton, 
the  appreciators  were  "  few."  The 
first  edition  of  "The  Excursion,"  was, 
according  to  the  fashion  of  the  time,  in 
quarto,  and  consisted  of  only  five  hun- 
dred copies,  and  six  years  elapsed 
before  another  was  called  for ;  nor  was 
the  poem  at  all  generally  circulated 
till  it  appeared  in  the  collection  of  the 
poet's  works,  in  a  popular  form,  in 
1837.  In  the  meantime  it  had  been 
followed  by  numerous  separate  publi- 
cations. "  The  White  Doe  of  Eylstone  " 
appeared  in  1815,  a  narrative  poeni 
of  an  ancient  time  of  great  imagina- 
tive beauty,  which  did  not,  however, 
save  it  from  the  wrath  of  Jeffrey,  who 
in  the  "Edinburgh  Eeview,"  absurd- 
ly assigned  it  "  the  merit  of  being  the 
very  worst  poem  he  ever  saw  imprinted 
in  a  quarto  volume,"  which  was  cer- 
tainly stultifying  himself  sufficiently, 
eonsidering  the  ineffable  trash  which 


must  have  come  before  him  in  the  pre- 
vious generation,  in  that  form.  The 
poem  now  needs  no  eulogy.  The  stu- 
pidity, malice,  or  detraction  of  critics 
cannot  hurt  it  further.  In  its  historic 
narrative  it  is  of  a  kindred  period, and  is 
written  in  the  same  enlivened  strain, 
with  the  "  Song  at  the  Feast  of  Broug- 
ham Castle ;"  while  the  lovely  creation 
of  the  gentle  animal  whose  name  it 
bears,  is  unique  in  our  poetic  litera- 
ture. In  1819,  "Peter  Bell,"  and  the 
"  Waggoner,"  were  published  ;  both 
had  been  written  long  before.  The 
first  was  dedicated  to  Southey,  the 
second  to  Charles  Lamb,"  who,  with 
Coleridge,  composed  the  inner  circle  of 
his  admirers  among  the  authors  of  the 
day,  and  were  endeared  to  him  by  the 
sincerest  affection — sharing  with  him 
the  foolish  epithet  of  the  Lakists,  or 
Lake  School  of  poets,  though  no 
writers  could  be  less  properly  classed 
together,  in  the  essential  qualities 
or  exhibitions  of  their  genius.  The 
author's  caprices  of  fancy  in  these 
poems  were,  as  usual,  stumbling  blocks 
to  the  critics,  who  would  make  no 
allowances  for  the  wild  growths  of 
nature,  but  would  have  every  flower 
growing  on  a  smooth  little  parterre, 
cultivated  according  to  their  own  taste, 
in  their  own  little  back  garden. 
Henceforth,  however,  Wordsworth's 
course  was  less  encumbered  with  diffi- 
culties on  this  score,  his  later  writings 
generally  following  the  more  accepted 
paths.  They  are,  for  the  most  part, 
embraced  in  various  series  of  Sonnets, 
among  which  the  "  Ecclesiastical 
Sketches,"  as  they  were  first  entitled, 
hold  a  leading  place ;  and  in  memor 
ials  of  numerous  towns  about  England 


WILLIAM  WORDSWORTH. 


565 


and  the  Continent,  extending  from  the 
Rhine,  through  the  heart  of  Switzer- 
land, to  Rome  and  the  Tiber.  "Words- 
worth was  always  fond  of  travelling. 
While  books,  he  said,  were  the  passion 
3f  South  ey ;  "  wandering  "  was  his  own ; 
and  it  was  checked  only  by  his  inabil- 
ity, from  want  of  fortune,  to  gratify  the 
propensity.  Yet  he  showed  great 
steadfastness  in  his  adherence  to  home 
and  its  local  associations  in  the  Lake 
country.  He  changed  his  residences 
only  from  necessity,  and  then  never 
wandered  far  from  the  little  cottage  in 
which  he  first  settled,  with  his  sister, 
at  Grasmere.  When  that  dwelling 
proved  too  small  for  his  increasing 
family,  in  1808,  he  took  another  in  its 
vicinity,  at  Allan  Bank,  where  he 
resided  for  three  or  four  years,  when 
he  passed  to  Rydal  Mount,  at  Amble- 
side,  his  beautiful  home,  bordered  by 
the  lake  and  mountains,  which,with  the 
assistance  of  his  friend,  Lord  Lonsdale, 
he  purchased  for  himself,  where,  the 
remaining  thirty-seven  years  of  his  life 
were  spent.  These  were  years  of  such 
felicity  as  rarely  happens  to  the  lot  of 
mortals,  long  unvisited  by  sickness  or 
death,  animated  by  the  fervors  of  poet- 
ical composition,  which  were  rewarded 
by  increasing  fame  and  respect ;  while 
an  easy  independence,  to  one  of  his 
simple  habits,  was  secured  by  the  re- 
munerative office  which  he  held  of 
distributor  of  stamps  for  the  County 
of  Westmoreland.  In  1843,  on  the 
death  of  Southey,  who  had  long  held 
the  office,  Wordsworth  received  the  ap- 
pointment of  Poet  Laureate.  When 
death  came,  after  a  short  illness,  result- 
ing from  a  cold,  which  separated  him 
but  a  few  days  from,  his  beloved  woods 


and  fields,  it  found  him,  at  the  age  of 
eighty,  in  full  enjoyment  of  his  facul 
ties,  honored  by  the  great  host  of  En- 
glish readers  throughout  the  world, 
whom  he  had  taught  the  secret  charm 
of  verse,  and  whose  lives  he  had  in 
vested  with  new  interest,  by  the  com- 
munication of  his  generous  philan- 
thropy. He  died  in  his  home,  at 
Rydal  Mount,  on  the  23d  of  April, 
1850,  the  day  celebrated  as  St.  George's 
Day ;  the  day  of  Shakespeare's  birth 
and  of  his  death — ministered  to  in  his 
last  hours  by  his  beloved  wife,  receiv- 
ing the  rite  of  the  Holy  Communion 
at  the  hands  of  his  son.  His  remains 
were  laid  near  those  of  his  children, 
in  Grasmere  church-yard.  "  His  own 
prophecy,"  writes  his  biographer, 
Bishop  Wordsworth,  "  in  the  lines, 

'  Sweet  flower  !  belike  one  day  to  have 
A  place  upon  thy  Poet's  grave, 
I  welcome  thee  once  more, 

is  now  fulfilled.  He  desired  no  splen- 
did tomb  in  a  public  mausoleum, 
He  reposes,  according  to  his  own  wish, 
beneath  the  green  turf,  among  the 
dalesmen  of  Grasmere,  under  the  syca 
mores  and  yews  of  a  country  church- 
yard, by  the  side  of  a  beautiful  stream, 
amid  the  mountains  which  he  loved  ; 
and  a  solemn  voice  seems  to  breathe 
from  his  grave,  which  blends  its  tones 
in  sweet  and  holy  harmony  with  the 
accents  of  his  poetry,  speaking  the 
language  of  humility  and  love,  of 
adoration  and  faith,  and  preparing 
the  soul,  by  a  religious  exercise  of  the 
kindly  affections,  and  by  a  devout 
contemplation  of  natural  beauty,  for 
translation  to  a  purer,  and  nobler,  and 
more  glorious  state  of  existence,  and 
for  a  fruition  of  heavenly  felicity." 


FELICIA     DOROTHEA     REMANS, 


MRS.  HEMANS,  whose  maiden 
name  was  Browne,  was  born 
at  Liverpool,  England,  the  25th  of 
September,  1794.  Her  father  was  a 
native  of  Ireland,  well  connected  in  that 
country ;  her  mother  was  an  English- 
woman of  Venetian  descent,  the  family 
numbering  in  its  early  history  several 
Do<2res,  and  a  commander  at  the  battle 

"        / 

of  Lepanto.  Her  grandfather  had  been 
the  Venetian  Consul  at  Liverpool,  and 
married  into  a  Lancashire  family.  In 
this  peculiar  ancestry,  combining  the 
blood  of  Ireland  and  Italy,  mingled 
with  that  of  England,  it  is  not  difficult 
to  trace  the  source  of  that  fine  impres- 
sibility and  imaginative  turn  of  mind 
which  distinguished  Felicia  from  her 
very  childhood.  She  would,  we  are 
told,  by  her  biographer,  Chorley,  "  of- 
ten, half  playfully,  half  proudly,  allude 
to  her  origin  as  accounting  for  the 
strong  tinge  of  romance,  which,  from 
infancy,  pervaded  every  thought,  word 
and  aspiration  of  her  daily  life;  and 
for  that  remarkable  instinct  towards 
the  beautiful,  which  rarely  forms  so 
prominent  a  feature  in  the  character  of 
one  wholly  English  born."  In  her 
childhood  she  was  much  noticed  for 
her  beauty — her  lustrous  complexion 

(506) 


and  long,  waving,  golden  hair.  The 
removal  of  her  parents,  consequent  up- 
on the  failure  of  her  father  in  his  mer- 
cantile business,  to  Nortb  Wales,  in 
her  sixth  year,  placed  her  in  a  situation 
well  adapted  to  foster  the  living  sus- 
ceptibilities of  her  nature.  The  new 
home  to  which  she  was  taken,  was  a 
large,  old  and  solitary  mansion  near 
Abergele,  in  Denbighshire,  close  to  the 
sea-shore,  and  enclosed  by  a  range  of 
mountains.  There  was  a  good  store  of 
books  in  the  dwelling,  and  a  loving  mo- 
ther by  her  side,  of  devoted  piety,  who 
taught  and  encouraged  her  in  every 
generous  aspiration,  and  planted  those 
seeds  of  religious  culture  in  her  mind 
which  bore  such  abundant  fruit  in  her 
writings.  To  her  mother,  indeed,  she 
owed  her  early  education,  her  own  ge- 
nius supplying  any  deficiency  of  tutors. 
She  soon  appropriated  to  herself  all  the 
resources  of  her  romantic  home,  exhib- 
iting a  disposition  fearless  and  poetic. 
The  house,  as  a  matter  of  course,  in  its 
lonely  situation,  had  the  reputation  of 
being  haunted.  There  was  a  rumor  of 
a  fiery  greyhound  keeping  watch  at 
the  end  of  the  avenue,  and  the  little 
Felicia,  more  fascinated  than  terrified, 
went  out  by  moonlight  in  quest  of  the 


r-Se^£ <mzs      Wre 


From  die  original  painting  by  Chappel  in  the  possession  of  the  publishers. 
Jolmson/Wilson  &  dxPiiblisliers,  Newlfofc. 


FELICIA  DOROTHEA  HEMANS. 


569 


some  of  the  best  minds  in  the  country. 
She  was  fortunate  in  the  acquaintance 
of  her  neighbor,  Dr.  Luxmore,  the 
Bishop  of  St.  Asaph,  the  diocese  in 
which  she  resided ;  and,  a  year  or  two 
later,  in  an  intimacy  with  Reginald  He- 
ber,  subsequently  the  devoted  Bishop 
of  Calcutta,  and  then  Rector  of  Hodnet, 
Salop,  England,  who  was  a  frequent  visi- 
tor to  his  father-in-law  in  Wales,  the 
Dean  of  St.  Asaph.  Heber,  learned, 
gentle,  amiable,  witty  and  refined ; 
like  George  Herbert,  uniting  the  ac- 
complishments of  University  life  with 
great  merit  as  an  author,  the  gentle- 
man and  the  poet,  was  of  all  men  the 
best  suited  to  sympathize  with  a  nature 
like  that  of  Mrs.  Hemans,  to  stimulate 
her  powers  and  fasten  her  affections 
upon  all  that  was  true  and  amiable  in 
art  and  religion.  On  her  first  acquain- 
tance with  Mr.  Heber,  she  writes  to  a 
friend :  "  I  am  more  delighted  with 
him  than  I  can  possibly  tell  you ;  his 
conversation  is  quite  rich  with  anec- 
dote, and  every  subject  on  which  he 
speaks,  had  been,  you  would  imagine, 
the  sole  study  of  his  life.  His  society 
has  made  much  the  same  sort  of  im- 
pression on  my  mind,  that  the  first  pe- 
rusal of  '  Ivanhoe  '  did ;  and  was  some- 
thing so  perfectly  new  to  me,  that  I 
can  hardly  talk  of  anything  else."  The 
influence  of  these  clerical  associations 
was  seen  in  her  writings.  In  1819,  she 
received  a  prize  of  fifty  pounds,  offered, 
in  Scotland,  for  the  best  poem  on  "  The 
Meeting  of  Wallace  and  Bruce  on  the 
banks  of  the  Carron ;"  and,  in  1820,  she 
published  a  poem  entitled  "  The  Scep- 
tic," didactic  in  its  purpose,  intended 
as  a  warning  against  the  evils  of 
infidelity.  She  also  projected  a  po- 
72 


em  of  great  extent  or  scope,  to  be 
called  "  Superstition  and  Revelation," 
in  planning  which  she  was  greatly  as- 
sisted and  encouraged  by  Heber ;  but 
the  design  proved  too  extensive  for  her 
time  and  opportunities,  and  was,  after 
a  small  portion  of  the  work  was  writ- 
ten, abandoned.  In  1821,  she  obtain- 
ed a  second  prize,  this  time  from  the 
Royal  Society  of  Literature,  for  a  poem 
on  Dartmoor. 

Living,  in  general,  much  apart  from 
the  world,  she  enjoyed  with  a  keener 
zest  her  occasional  participation  in  its 
active  current  of  amusements.  Shakes- 
peare had  always  been  her  delight; 
and  when,  on  a  visit  to  Liverpool,  she 
saw  Kean,  in  two  of  his  great  charac- 
ters, Richard  the  Third,  and  Othello, 
she  felt,  as  she  expressed  it,  as  if  she 
had  never  understood  Shakespeare  till 
then.  "I  shall  never  forget,"  she 
wrote,  "  the  sort  of  electric  light  which 
seemed  to  flash  across  my  mind,  from 
the  bursts  of  power  he  displayed,  in 
several  of  my  favorite  passages." 
Chorley  tells  us  that  it  was  to  her  we 
owe  the  saying,  often  quoted,  that 
"  seeing  Kean  act  was  like  reading 
Shakespeare  by  flashes  of  lightning." 
The  impression  of  these  stage  perform- 
ances may  have  had  their  influence  in 
her  next  choice  of  a  subject,  an  his- 
torical tragedy,  "  The  Vespers  of  Pal- 
ermo." It  was  at  a  period  when  any 
one  who  could  write  verse  at  all  waa 
led  to  attempt  dramatic  composition. 
Hannah  More,  among  the  female  au- 
thors, had  led  the  way,  and  Joanna 
Baillie  was  establishing  a  distinguished 
reputation  in  this  field.  Mrs.  Hemans 
was  urged  in  the  same  direction  by 
the  advice  of  Heber  and  Milman, 


570 


FELICIA  DOROTHEA  HEMAK3. 


whose  writing  for  the  stage  did  not 
hinder  his  advancement  in  the  Church. 
She  took  some  time  in  the  preparation 
of  this  play,  which  we  may  suppose  to 
have  been  influenced  in  its  thought  and 
manner  by  her  admiration  of  the  dra- 
matic works  of  Schiller,  an  author 
whose  works  she  greatly  admired, 
studying  them  closely  in  the  original; 
for  she  had  now,  stimulated  by  the 
return  of  her  sister  from  Germany,  and 
the  supplies  of  books,  forwarded  by 
her  eldest  brother,  then  with  the  em- 
bassy at  Vienna,  entered,  with  her 
accustomed  energy,  into  an  intimate 
acquaintance  with  the  literature  of 
that  country. 

"  She,  in  general,"  writes  her  sister, 
"  preferred  the  writings  of  Schiller  to 
those  of  Goethe,  and  could  for  ever  find 
fresh  beauties  in  "  Wallenstein,"  with 
which  she  was  equally  familiar  in  its 
eloquent  original,  and  in  Coleridge's 
magnificent  translation,  or,  as  it  may 
truly  be  called,  transfusion.  Those 
most  conversant  with  her  literary 
tastes,  will  remember  her  almost  ac- 
tual, relation-like  love  for  the  charac- 
ters of  Max  and  Thekla,  whom,  like 
many  other  '  beings  of  the  mind,'  she 
had  learned  to  consider  as  friends ;  and 
her  constant  quotations  of  certain 
passages  from  this  noble  tragedy, 
which  peculiarly  accorded  with  her 
own  views  and  feelings.  In  the  Stim- 
mer  der  Volker  in  Lieder,  of  Herder, 
she  found  a  rich  store  of  thoughts  and 
suggestions,  and  it  was  this  work 
which  inspired  her  with  the  idea  of 
her  own  '  Lays  of  Many  Lands.'  She 
also  took  great  delight  in  the  dreamy 
beauties  of  Novalis  and  Tieck,  and  in 
what  had  been  gracefully  characterised 


by  Mr.  Chorley,  as  the  'moonlight 
tenderness '  of  Oehlenschlager.  Of 
the  works  of  the  latter,  her  espec- 
ial favorite  was  '  Correggio  ; '  and 
of  Tieck,  l  StembalcFs  Wander  ungen] 
which  she  often  made  her  out-of-doors 
companion.  It  was  always  an  especial 
mark  of  her  love  for  a  book,  and  of  her 
considering  it  true  to  nature,  and  to 
the  best  wisdom  of  the  heart,  when  she 
promoted  it  to  the  list  of  those  with 
which  she  would  l  take  sweet  counsel ' 
amidst  the  woods  and  fields." 

After  various  delays,  the  "  Vespers 
of  Palermo  "  was  written  and  accepted 
for  performance  by  Charles  Kemble, 
then  manager  of  Covent  Garden  Thea- 
tre. It  was  acted  in  December,  1823, 
Young  and  Kemble  taking  leading 
parts  in  the  Count  di  Procida  and  his 
son,  and  Miss  F.  H.  Kelly,  Constance, 
the  chief  female  character.  Its  first 
performance  proved  anything  but  suc- 
cessful. It  doubtless  lacked  the  neces- 
sary condensed  energy  of  language  and 
action  for  the  stage ;  but  it  might  have 
been  carried  through  successfully,  it 
was  thought  by  friendly  critics,  had  it 
not  been  for  the  inefficiency  of  the 
leading  actress.  Kemble  proposed  to 
substitute  Miss  Foote  in  her  place,  but 
various  obstacles  to  the  reproduction 
of  the  piece  interposed,  and  it  was 
quietly  dropped,  in  London — to  be 
revived,  however,  a  month  or  two  la- 
ter in  Edinburgh,  when  the  part  of 
the  heroine  was  taken  by  Mrs.  Henry 
Siddons,  with  Vandenhoff  and  Cal craft 
in  the  chief  male  characters.  Mrs. 
Siddons  made  great  exertions ;  and, 
with  the  aid  of  an  Epilogue,  written  by 
Sir  Walter  Scott,  the  piece  went  ofl 
triumphantly.  Murray,  the  London 


FELICIA  DOEOTHEA   REMANS. 


57J 


publisher,  gave  the  author  two  hun- 
dred guineas  for  the  copyright  of  the 
"  Vespers  of  Palermo ;"  and  the  same 
year  (1823)  published,  in  another  vol- 
ume, her  dramatic  poem,  "The  Siege 
of  Valencia,"  "  The  Last  Constantine," 
and  other  poems. 

Mrs.  Llemans  was  now  contributing 

o 

to  the  "  New  Monthly  Magazine,"  un- 
der the  editorship  of  Thomas  Campbell, 
the  series  of  poems  already  alluded  to 
as  suggested  by  her  German  reading, 
which  were  published  in  1827,  with 
the  title,  "  Lays  of  Many  Lands."  The 
design,  she  tells  us,  was  that  each 
should  be  commemorative  of  some 
national  recollection,  popular  custom 
or  tradition.  The  suggestions  of  the 
topics  she  found  in  her  wide  miscella- 
neous reading,  in  the  notices  of  travel- 
lers in  various  countries,  in  books  of 
history  and  biography,  in  old  tradi- 
tions and  popular  songs,  taking  some 
picturesque  incident,  supplying  its  de- 
tails and  scenery,  and  coloring  it  with 
the  warm  hues  of  sentiment  and  fancy. 
It  was  a  department  of  literary  pro- 
duction which  she  made  her  own,  and 
in  which  she  had  many  imitators.  In 
all  her  writings  of  this  kind,  there  was 
a  tender  grace  of  feeling,  a  descriptive 
talent  of  rare  excellence,  and  frequently 
a  fine  lyric  enthusiasm,  as  in  the  little 
poem  founded  on  a  custom  in  ancient 
Britain,  mentioned  in  "The  Cambrian 
Antiquities,"  of  proclaiming  war  by 
sending  through  the  land  a  Bended 
Bow.  Prefixed  to  the  collection  of 
these  poems,  in  the  same  volume,  ap- 
peared a  narrative  poem  of  some 
length,  entitled  "  The  Forest  Sanc- 
tuary." It  was  suggested  by  souie 
passages  in  Blanco  White's  "Letters 


from  Spain,"  under  the  name  of  Don 
Leucadio  Doblado,  and  was  intended 
to  describe  the  mental  conflicts,  as  well 
as  outward  sufferings,  of  a  Spaniard,  a 
Protestant,  flying  from  the  religious 
persecutions  of  his  country,  in  the  six- 
teenth century,  and  taking  refuge  with 
his  child  in  a  North  American  forest. 
Mrs.  Hemans  was  disposed  to  consider 
this  the  best  of  her  longer  poems,  an 
estimate  in  which  her  biographer, 
Chorley,  is  disposed  to  concur.  "  The 
whole  poem,"  says  he,  "  whether  in  its 
scenes  of  superstition — the  Auto  Da 
Fe — the  dungeon — the  flight,  or  in  its 
delineation  of  the  mental  conflicts  of 
its  hero — or  in  its  forest  pictures  of 
the  Free  West,  which  offer  such  a  de- 
licious repose  to  the  mind,  is  full  of 
happy  thoughts  and  turns  of  expres- 
sion." 

The  volume  which  contained  these 
poems  was  followed,  the  next  year,  by 
another,  "The  Records  of  Woman — 
with  other  Poems,"  which,  with  the 
"  Forest  Sanctuary,"  was  made  the 
subject  of  a  critique  by  Jeffrey  in  the 
"  Edinburgh  Review,"  in  which  he  ad- 
mitted the  author  to  a  distinguished 
place  among  the  literary  women  of 
England,  commending  her  especially 
for  "  a  singular  felicity  in  the  choice 
and  employment  of  her  imagery,  and 
establishing  a  fine  accord  between  the 
world  of  sense  and  of  soul, — a  deli- 
cate blending  of  our  deep  inward 
emotions  with  their  splendid  symbols 
and  emblems  without."  He  ranked 
her,  in  fine,  as,  "  beyond  all  compari- 
son, the  most  touching  and  accomplish- 
ed writer  of  occasional  verses  that  oui 
literature  has  yet  to  boast  of."  Thia 
was  indeed  the  forte  of  the  authoress. 


572 


FELICIA   DOROTHEA  HEMANS. 


The  short  flights  of  her  muse  are  the 
best  and  highest.  While  her  longer 
poems  are  seldom  read,  the  brief  im- 
provements in  verse  from  her  pen  of 
some  striking  incident,  or  touching  or 
elevated  thought  of  heroic  or  domestic 
life,  are  many  of  them  "familiar  as 
household  words."  Her  skill  and  fe- 
licity in  these  compositions  made  her 
one  of  the  most  popular  contributors 
of  her  day  to  the  magazines  and  annu- 
als, for  she  wrote  when  the  latter  were 
in  the  ascendant,  and  some  of  her  best 
poems  appeared  in  their  holiday  vol- 
umes. Ready  and  facile  in  execution, 
with  a  sympathetic  imagination,  which 
never  flagged  in  its  exercise,  she  poured 
out,  month  after  month,  during  the 
few  remaining  years  of  her  life,  a  great 
number  of  these  delicate  effusions. 
"  It  may  not,"  writes  Jeffrey,  speaking 
of  the  general  character  of  her  liter- 
ary powers,  "  be  the  best  imaginable 
poetry,  and  may  not  indicate  the  very 
highest  or  most  commanding  genius; 
but  it  embraces  a  great  deal  of  that 
which  gives  the  very  best  poetry  its 
chief  power  of  pleasing;  and  would 
strike  us,  perhaps,  as  more  impassioned 
and  exalted,  if  it  were  not  regulated 
and  harmonized  by  the  most  beautiful 
taste.  It  is  infinitely  sweet,  elegant 
and  tender — touching,  perhaps,  and 
contemplative,  rather  than  vehement 
and  overpowering;  and  not  only  fin- 
ished throughout  with  an  exquisite 
delicacy,  and  even  serenity  of  execu- 
tion, but  informed  with  a  purity  and 
loftiness  of  feeling,  and  a  certain 
sober  and  humble  tone  of  indulgence 
and  piety,  which  must  satisfy  all 
judgments,  and  allay  the  apprehen- 
sions of  those  who  are  most  afraid 


of    the    passionate   exaggerations   of 
poetry." 

About  the  time  of  her  last-mention 
ed  publication,  in  the  autumn  of  1828, 
Mrs.  Hemans,  in  consequence  of  new 
family  arrangements,  removed  from 
Wales  to  establish  herself  with  her 
children  in  a  plain  cottage  at  Waver- 
tree,  near  Liverpool.  This  brought 
her  within  range  of  various  visitors, 
who  came  to  express  admiration  of  her 
talents,  while  she  kept  up  a  corres- 
pondence with  Miss  Mitford,  Joanna 
Baillie,  Mary  Howitt,  Bernard  Barton, 
and  other  literary  persons  of  distinc- 
tion. She  had  already  received  much 
notice  from  America,  a  collection  of 
her  poems  having  passed  through 
several  editions  at  Boston,  under  the 
friendly  direction  of  Professor  Norton, 
of  Harvard.  George  Bancroft  wrote 
an  article  on  her  writings  for  the  North 
American  Review,  and  her  portrait 
was  painted  by  an  American  artist, 
W.  E.  West,  in  her  last  year  in  Wales. 
She  always  valued  highly  her  Ameri- 
can reputation ;  and  probably,  from  the 
large  circulation  of  her  poems  in  the 


newspapers, 


she    was    known    to    a 


greater  circle  of  readers  in  that  coun- 
try than  in  her  own. 

A  visit,  in  1829,  to  Mr.  Hamilton, 
the  author  of  "  Cyril  Thornton,"  at  his 
residence  at  Chiefswood,  near  Abbots- 
ford,  gave  Mrs.  Hemans  the  opportu- 
nity of  making  the  personal  acquaint- 
ance of  Sir  Walter  Scott,  who  showed 
her  many  kindly  attentions,  entertain- 
ing her  for  some  days  at  his  home,  and 
traversing  with  her  the  historic  scenery 
of  his  neighborhood.  The  whole  scene 
must  have  appeared  to  her  like  an  ad- 
venture in  fairy -land,  as  the  mighty 


FELICIA  DOROTHEA  HEMANS. 


5T3 


magician  called  up  for  her  tale  and 
legend  of  the  past.  Her  notices  of 
the  visit,  preserved  in  the  Memoirs  by 
her  sister,  are  of  the  highest  interest. 
"  I  have  taken,"  she  writes,  "  several 
long  walks  with  him  over  moor  and 
brae,  and  it  is  indeed  delightful  to  see 
him  thus,  and  to  hear  him  pour  forth, 
from  the  fulness  of  his  rich  mind  and 
peopled  memory,  song  and  legend  and 
tale  of  old,  until  I  could  almost  fancy 
I  heard  the  gathering-cry  of  some 
chieftain  of  the  hills,  so  completely 
does  his  spirit  carry  me  back  to  the 
days  of  the  slogan  and  the  fire-cross." 
One  of  the  things,  we  are  told, 
which  particularly  struck  her  imagi- 
nation, amongst  the  thousand  relics  at 
Abbotsford,  was  the  "  sad,  fearful  pic- 
ture "  of  Queen  Mary  in  the  dining- 
room,  representing  her  head,  like  John 
the  Baptist's,  in  a  charger,  and  painted 
the  day  after  her  execution.  On  the 
way  with  Scott  from  Yarrow,  whither 
he  had  taken  her,  "we  talked,"  says 
she,  "  a  good  deal  of  trees.  I  asked 
Sir  Walter  if  he  had  not  observed  that 
every  tree  gives  out  its  own  peculiar 
sound  to  the  wind.  He  said  he  had, 
and  suggested  to  me  that  something 
might  be  done,  by  the  union  of  music 
and  poetry,  to  imitate  those  voices  of 
trees,  giving  a  different  measure  and 
style  to  the  oak,  the  pine,  the  willow, 
etc.  He  mentioned  a  Highland  air  of 
somewhat  similar  character,  called 
The  Notes  of  the  Sea  Birds.'  "  In  all 
this,  and  more  equally  characteristic 
of  these  delightful  interviews,  we  see 
much  of  Sir  Walter  Scott  in  his  genial 
poetic  nature,  and  much  also  of  Mrs. 
Hemans  in  her  own. 

If  Scott  was  to  her  the  great  master 


of  romance,  she  was  also  fortunate  in 
her  intercourse  with  another  great 
poetic  intellect  of  the  age,  the  philo- 
sophic Wordsworth.  This  acquaint 
anceship,  which  grew  into  an  intimacy, 
exercised  an  important  influence  on  her 
later  writings.  Family  afflictions  were 
meanwhile  chastening  her  life,  always 
marked  by  its  gentleness  and  submis- 
sion. In  a  gay  mood  she  could  always 
surrender  herself  to  an  "  Hour  of  Ro- 
mance," as  she  entitles  one  of  her 
poems,  and  live  over  some  old  dream  of 
chivalry ;  but  as  the  pressing  interests 
of  life  closed  around  her,  she  gave  her- 
self to  more  real  though  less  ambiti- 
ous topics.  The  poetry  of  domestic 
life,  as  it  appears  in  the  excitement  of 
joy,  the  calm  sufferance  of  affliction, 
or  the  hope  of  hereafter,  arrested  her 
thoughts.  She  felt  that  this  came 
home  to  the  hearts  of  all ;  that,  while 
other  themes  might  attract  the  fancy 
or  imagination,  this  was  buried  deep 
in  the  soul,  with  an  interest  permanent 
as  our  nature.  She  knew  that  other 
associations  of  man  would  lose  their 
force — the  storied  castle  perish  with 
the  record  of  human  glory — while 
this  remained  a  part  of  our  common 
humanity — 

"  There  may  the  bard's  high  themes  be  found 

We  die,  we  pass  away  : 
But  faith,  love,  pity — these  are  bound 
To  earth  without  decay. 

The  heart  that  burns,  the  cheek  that  glows, 

The  tear  from  hidden  springs, 
The  thorn  and  glory  of  the  rose — 

These  are  undying  things." 

This  change  in  the  poetry  of  Mrs. 
Hemans,  caused  by  a  devotion  to  real 
life,  may  in  no  slight  degree  be  at- 
tributed to  the  study  of  Wordsworth. 


574 


FELICIA  DOEOTHEA   REMANS. 


.  Wlien  she  had  once  become  acquainted 
with  his  works,  they  were  ever  after 
her  chosen  oracles.  What  she  says,  in 
one  of  her  letters,  of  the  lake  scenery, — 
"  My  spirit  is  too  much  lulled  by  these 
sweet  scenes  to  breathe  one  word  of 
sword  and  spear  until  I  have  bid 
Winandermere  farewell  " — may  be  ex- 
tended to  the  mighty  genius  of  the 
place.  The  poetry  of  Wordsworth 
opened  to  her  a  new  being.  She  had 
before  looked  upon  the  world  with  an 
eye  to  the  fanciful  and  romantic ;  she 
now  saw  the  simple  and  religious. 
Her  thoughts  of  the  affections  had 
been  always  blended  with  the  wo- 
man's love  of  excitement,  the  interest 
of  battle  and  engagement,  the  knight- 
ly banquet  and  the  aged  minstrel,  the 
tilt  and  tourney,  the  masquerade,  and 
all  the  ancient  retinue  of  chivalry ; 
now  they  were  attempered  to  a  kind- 
lier feeling.  Her  harp  had  echoed  to 
notes  of  glory  and  adventure,  it  was 
now  responsive  to  the  vibrations  of 
the  soul.  She  became  acquainted  in 
his  pages  with — 

"The  still  sad  music  of  humanity  " 

stealing  gently  from  the  heart  of  every 
human  being,  the  simple  as  well  as  the 
learned,  the  cottager  and  peasant  alike 
with  the  nobleman,  the  humblest  with 
the  most  elevated.  Here  she  found 
something  like  repose.  The  tempest 
of  the  passions  was  stayed,  the  airy 
visions  of  fancy  were  called  home,  and 
she  came  to  learn  the  calm  of  true  po- 
etry. In  her  own  language,  her  earlier 
works  had  been — 

"  Sad  sweet  fragments  of  a  strain — 
First  notes  of  some  yet  struggling  harmony, 


By  the  strong  rush,  the  crowding  joy  and  pain 
Of  many  inspirations  met,  and  held 
From  its  true  sphere." 

After  this  introduction  Mrs.  Hemana 
became  a  devoted  student  of  Words- 
worth ;  so  that,  at  least  during  the  later 
years  of  her  life,  a  single  day  never 
passed  without  reference  to  his  works. 
It  was  indeed  a  source  of  pleasure  to 
her  when  she  lived  a  summer  at  "  The 
Lakes,"  during  part  of  the  time  an  in- 
mate at  Rydal  Mount.  Her  acquaint- 
ance with  the  man  did  not  detract 
from  the  idea  of  his  writings.  Her  let- 
ters of  that  period  afford  a  testimony 
of  his  worth  by  one  whose  life  and  ge- 
nius had  prepared  her  singularly  to 
appreciate  it.  She  writes:  "I  am 
charmed  with  Mr.  Wordsworth  *  *  * 
'  There  is  a  daily  beauty  in  his  life ' 
which  is  in  such  lovely  harmony  with 
his  poetry,  that  I  am  thankful  to  hare 
witnessed  and  felt  it.  He  gives  me  a 
good  deal  of  his  society,  reads  to  me, 
walks  with  me,  leads  my  pony  when 
I  ride,  and  I  begin  to  talk  with  him 
as  with  a  sort  of  paternal  friend.  The 
whole  of  this  morning,  he  kindly  pass- 
ed in  reading  to  me  a  great  deal  from 
Spenser,  and  afterwards  his  own  '  Lao- 
damia,'  my  favorite  'Tintern  Abbey,' 
and  many  of  those  noble  sonnets  which 
you,  like  myself,  enjoy  so  much.  His 
reading  is  very  peculiar,  but,  to  my 
ear,  delightful ;  slow,  solemn,  earnest 
in  expression,  more  than  any  I  have 
ever  heard ;  when  he  reads  or  recites 
in  open  air,  his  deep  rich  tones  seem  to 
proceed  from  a  spirit  voice,  and  to  be- 
long to  the  religion  of  the  place ;  they 
harmonize  so  fitly  with  the  thrilling 
tones  of  woods  and  waterfalls." 

Intimacy  with  the  poetry  of  Words 


FELICIA  DOROTHEA  HEMANS. 


575 


worth,  doubtless  led  the  way  to  the 
change  to  a  more  serious  character  in 
Mrs.  Hemans'  verse,  which  the  severe 
school  of  affliction  afterwards  matured. 
The  "  Quarterly  Review  "  of  1820,  in  a 
notice  of  her  poems,  says:  "In  our 
opinion,  all  her  poems  are  elegant  and 
pure  in  thought  and  language :  her  la- 
ter poems  are  of  higher  promise,  they 
are  vigorous,  picturesque,  and  pathet- 
ic." There  was  yet  a  third  stage  to 
which  they  afterwards  attained — they 
became  sublime  and  religious.  It  was 
not  till  sickness  had  touched  her  frame, 
and  sorrow  tamed  the  wildness  of  her 
spirit,  that  she  reached  the  worthiest 
efforts  in  song.  As  her  heart  was  puri- 
fied from  the  world,  her  mind  was  freed 
also,  and  soared  to  a  better  element. 
Its  purpose  was  fixed,  for  it  had  found 
an  appropriate  object  in  the  religious 
sympathies  of  life.  Not  only  the  do- 
mestic affections,  but  even  the  beauties 
of  nature,  ever  familiar  to  her  verse, 
were  colored  with  a  new  aspect. 

Returning  to  her  earlier  German 
studies,  she  projected  at  this  period  a 
series  of  papers  on  the  literary  produc- 
tions of  that  country  for  the  "New 
Monthly  Magazine,"  of  which  one  only 
was  written.  It  is  of  interest  as  an 
evidence  of  what  she  might  have  ac- 
complished in  prose,  in  richness  and 
freedom  of  style,  had  she  turned  her 
attention  in  that  direction ;  and  it  has 
a  more  especial  value  for  its  exhibi- 
tion, so  often  illustrated  in  her  own 
works,  of  the  elements  of  poetical 
thought  and  feeling.  Choosing  for 
her  subject  the  "Tasso"  of  Goethe, 
she  notices  that  work  as  a  pic- 
ture of  the  struggle  between  the 
spirit  of  poetry  and  the  spirit  of  the 


world.  "  Why,"  she  asks,  "  is  it  that 
this  collision  is  almost  invariably  fa- 
tal to  a  gentler  and  holier  nature  ?'* 
*  *  *  We  thus  admit  it  essential  to 
his  high  office,  that  the  chambers  of 
imagery  in  the  heart  of  the  poet  must 
be  filled  with  materials  moulded  from 
the  sorrows,  the  affections,  the  fiery 
trials  and  immortal  longings  of  the 
human  soul.  Where  love  and  faith 
and  anguish  meet  and  contend;  where 
the  tones  of  prayer  are  wrung  from 
the  suffering  spirit,  there  lie  his  veins 
of  treasure ;  there  are  the  sweet  waters 
ready  to  flow  from  the  stricken  rock. 
But  he  will  not  seek  them  through 
the  gaudy  and  hurrying  masque  of 
artificial  life ;  he  will  not  be  the  fet- 
tered Samson  to  make  sport  for  the 
sons  and  daughters  of  fashion ;  whilst 
he  shuns  no  brotherly  communion 
with  his  kind,  he  will  ever  reserve  to 
his  nature  the  power  of  self-commu- 
nion, silent  hours  for 

'  The  harvest  of  the  quiet  eye 
That  broods  and  sleeps  on  his  own  heart ;' 

and  inviolate  retreats  in  the  depths  of 
his  being — fountains  lone  and  still, 
upon  which  only  the  eye  of  heaven 
shines  down  in  its  hallowed  serenity." 
After  living  a  little  more  than  ten 
years  at  Wavertree,  Mrs.  Hemans 
changed  her  residence  to  the  city  of 
Dublin,  where  the  remainder  of  her 
days  were  passed.  Her  health  was 
now  much  broken,  but  she  continued 
the  constant  exercise  of  her  pen.  In 
addition  to  the  collections  of  her 
poems  already  enumerated,  she  pub- 
lished, in  1830,  a  volume  of  "Songs 
of  the  Affections,"  followed  during 
her  residence  in  Dublin  by  "  Hyinng 


576 


FELICIA  DOROTHEA  HEMANS. 


for  Childhood,"  "  National  Lyrics  and 
Songs  for  Music,"  and  "  Scenes  and 
Hymns  of  Life."  The  last  was  dedi- 
cated, to  Wordsworth,  and  in  many 
respects  may  be  regarded  as  its  wri- 
ter's best  work.  It  bears  the  impress 
of  sorrow,  alleviated  by  religious  con- 
solation, and  is  distinguished  as  well 
by  its  fine  literary  execution,  for  the 
author  never  flagged  in  devotion  to 
her  art.  Her  latest  poem,  entitled  a 
"  Sabbath  Sonnet,"  was  dictated  dur- 
ing her  last  illness,  about  a  fortnight 
orly  before  her  death.  It  breathes 
the  gentle  affection,  the  sympathy  for 
others,  the  love  of  nature,  and  the 
calm  spirit  of  resignation  which  had 
guided  her  life. 

"  How  many  blessed  groups  this  hour  are  bend- 
ing, 
Through  England's  primrose-meadow  paths 

their  way 
Toward  spire  and  tower,  'midst  shadowy  elms 

ascending, 
Whence  the  sweet  chimes  proclaim  the  hal- 

low'd  day. 

The  halls,  from  old  heroic  ages  gray, 
Pour  their  fair  children  forth  ;  and  hamlets 

low, 
With  whose  thick  orchard  blooms  the  soft 

winds  play, 

Send  out  their  inmates  in  a  happy  flow, 
Like  a  free  vernal  stream.     I  may  not  tread 
With  them  those  pathways—to  the  feverish 

bed 

Of  sickness  bound;  yet,  oh!  my  God!  I  bless 
Thy  mercy,  that  with  Sabbath  peace  hath 

fill'd 
My  chasten'd  heart,  and  all  its  throbbings 

still'd 
To  one  deep  calm  of  lowliest  thankfulness." 

This  was  dictated  on  one  of  the 
closing  days  of  April,  1835;  on  the 
12th  of  May,  she  breathed  her  last, 
leaving  to  the  world  the  rich  legacy  in 
her  various  writings  of  a  spirit  attuned 
to  all  noble  impulses  in  the  love  of  na- 


ture and  of  art — a  soul  formed  for 
friendship,  and  unwearied  in  sympathy 
with  her  race,  divinely  nurtured  by 
the  inspirations  of  religion.  There  is 
an  unaifected  eloquence  in  her  poems, 
the  growth  of  her  ardent  imagination 
and  generous  susceptibilities,  which 
imparts  an  interest  to  the  simplest  of 
them.  They  are  natural,  original,  clear, 
and  straigntiorward  in  expression, 
earnest  and  animating.  They  frequent- 
ly, bring  us  to  the  wealth  of  other 
climes,  and  of  the  literature  of  other 
nations;  but  the  informing  spirit  is 
that  of  the  pure,  gentle  English  lady, 
whose  ability  is  never  more  strikingly 
shown  than  in  her  investing  the  com- 
mon incidents  of  life  with  the  throng- 
ing associations  of  her  fancy  and  the 
sweetest  charms  of  feeling. 

The  remains  of  Mrs.  Hemans  were 
placed  in  a  vault  beneath  St.  Anne's 
Church,  Dublin,  in  the  immediate 
neighborhood  of  her  residence  in  tho 
city.  A  small  tablet  has  been  placed 
above  the  spot,  inscribed  with  her 
name,  her  age,  and  the  date  of  her 
death,  with  a  stanza  of  one  of  her 
own  poems : — 

"  Calm  on  the  bosom  of  thy  Grod, 

Fair  spirit,  rest  thee  now ! 
E'en  while  with  us  thy  footsteps  trod, 
His  seal  was  on  thy  brow. 

Dust  to  the  narrow  home  beneath! 

Soul  to  its  place  on  high ! 
They  that  have  seen  thy  look  in  death, 

No  more  may  fear  to  die." 

Another  tablet  was  erected  by  her 
brother  in  the  Cathedral  of  St.  Asaph, 
by  her  old  home  in  Wales :  "  In  mem- 
ory of  Felicia  Hemans,  whose  char 
acter  is  best  portrayed  in  her  writ 
ings." 


r  -.* 


ARTHUR,     DUKE     OF     WELLINGTON. 


IT  was  probably  about  1535  that 
two  young  gentlemen  from  Rut- 
landshire, in  England,  named  Walter 
and  Robert  Cowley,  or  Colley,  or 
Coolley,  migrated,  to  advance  their 
fortunes,  to  the  kingdom  of  Ireland ; 
and  there,  somehow  or  other,  they 
appear  to  have  got  such  landed  pos- 
sessions as  enabled  them  to  educate 
their  descendants  for  the  learned  pro- 
fessions and  for  the  service  of  arms,  as 
we  find  several  of  that  name,  hitherto 
unknown,  cropping  out  here  and  there, 
in  subsequent  years,  in  local  history. 
No  antiquarian  with  whose  works  we 
are  acquainted,  has  ascertained  with 
whom  Walter  Cowley  married ;  and 
the  Duke  of  Wellington  would  have 
given  little  encouragement  to  such  in- 
vestigations ;  for  he  seems  to  have 
been  singularly  indifferent  as  to  the 
history  of  his  progenitors.  We  know, 
however,  that  of  Walter  Cowley  was 
descended  a  great-granddaughter,  who 
wedded  Garret  Wesley,  a  gentleman 
of  Meath,  descended  from  an  English 
family  which  came  from  Sussex  in  the 
latter  part  of  the  fifteenth  century, 
and  which  seems  to  have  thriven  in 

Abridged  from  the   "Encyclopaedia  Britan- 
nica." 

73 


Ireland.  There  were  no  children  born 
of  this  marriage,  and  Gariet  Wesley, 
in  default  of  issue,  adopted  the  nephew 
of  his  wife,  one  Richard  Cowley,  and 
made  him  heir  to  his  estates,  on  condi- 
tion that  he  assumed  the  name  and 
arms  of  the  Wesley  family.  That  the 
possessions  thus  acquired  in  1728,  by 
Richard  Cowley  Wesley,  were  not  in- 
considerable, or  that  his  political  ser- 
vices were  of  importance,  we  may  con- 
clude, from  the  fact,  that  in  1747,  he 
was  elevated  from  a  seat  in  the  Irish 
House  of  Commons  to  a  peerage,  by 
the  title  of  Baron  Mornington;  but 
there  is  reason  to  believe  that  his  ac- 
tivity and  zeal  as  a  Hanoverian,  had 
more  to  do  with  his  honors  than  the 
extent  of  his  fortune;  for  his  son,  also 
named  Garret,  who  succeeded  him, 
could  not  boast  of  any  large  property. 
The  second  Baron  Mornington  dis- 
played the  same  political  bias  as  his 
father,  and  rendered  similar  services 
so  that,  having  strengthened  his  posi- 
tion in  1759  by  a  marriage  with  Anne, 
the  daughter  of  Arthur  Hill,  Viscount 
Dungannon,  he  also  was  advanced  in 
the  peerage,  and  in  1760,  was  created 
Earl  of  Mornington.  Perhaps  he  waa 

in  some  degree  indebted  to  the  musio 

(877) 


678 


ARTHUR,   DUKE   OF  WELLINGTON. 


al  ear  of  George  III.  for  the  advance- 
ment, inasmuch  as  the  earl  was  a  com- 
poser of  no  ordinary  merit,  and  excell- 
ed in  the  species  of  composition  which 
was  most  pleasing  to  the  king.  In  no 
other  way  does  he  appear  to  have 
benefited  by  the  royal  favor,  as  his 
means  were  scarcely  adequate  to  main- 
tain the  large  family  which  grew  up 
around  him  in  the  style  suited  to  their 
position.  Three  sons  had  been  born 
to  him;  when,  on  a  day  yet  undeter- 
mined, in  1769,  Arthur  Wesley  was 
brought  into  the  world.  A  like  un- 
certainty also  seems  to  exist  regarding 
the  place  of  his  birth,  whether  at  Dan- 
gan  Castle,  in  the  county  of  Meath,  or 
at  Morniugton  House,  Dublin.  The 
register  in  St.  Peter's  Church,  Dublin, 
records  his  baptism  on  the  30th  April, 
1769;  while  his  mother  long  after  as- 
serted that  he  was  born  on  the  1st  of 
May.  The  Duke  himself,  when  it  be- 
came a  matter  of  interest,  accepted  the 
latter  date  for  the  celebration  of  his 
birth-day.  Of  his  early  years,  com- 
paratively little  has  been  recorded. 
He  was  not  appreciated,  it  is  said,  by 
his  mother  in  his  childhood.  Accord- 
ing to  his  biographer,  the  Rev.  G.  R. 
Gleig,  she  looked  upon  him  as  the 
dunce  of  the  family,  and  treated  him 
harshly,  if  not  with  marked  neglect. 
While  he  was  quite  young,  he  was 
gent  to  an  inferior  preparatory  school 
at  Chelsea,  in  England,  whence  he  was 
transferred  to  Eton  College,  where 
be  passed  but  a  short  time,  without 
success  as  a  scholar.  His  father  being 
now  dead,  he  was  taken  by  his  mother 
to  Brussels  in  1784 ;  and  the  following 
year,  sent  to  the  French  military  school 
at  Angers. 


For  several  years  he  studied  undei 
Pignerol,  the  great  engineer;  and  in 
March,  1787,  shortly  after  his  return 
home,  he  became  an  undistinguished 
ensign  in  the  73d  regiment.  His  pro- 
motion was  rapid,  for  in  less  than  a 
year  he  became  lieutenant  in  the  76th 
regiment,  from  which  he  was  moved 
into  the  41st  regiment  of  foot.  From 
that  regiment  he  exchanged  into  a 
cavalry  regiment,  the  12th  light  dra- 
goons, as  a  subaltern ;  but  he  did  not 
long  remain  in  that  rank,  for  on  the 
30th  June,  1791,  he  got  his  company 
in  the  58th  regiment,  and  in  1^92,  he 
changed  his  company  of  -foot  for  a 
troop  in  the  18th  light  dragoons,  and 
in  another  year  or  so  obtained  his 
majority  in  the  33d  regiment,  to  the 
command  of  which,  as  lieutenant-colo- 
nel, by  purchase,  in  which  he  was  aid- 
ed by  his  brother,  he  attained  in  Sep- 
tember, 1793. 

Already  aid-de-camp  to  the  Marquis 
of  Caniden,  the  Lord-Lieutenant,  whose 
court  in  Dublin  was  at  that  period 
both  brilliant  and  expensive,  Arthur 
Wesley,  in  1790,  on  coming  of  age, 
took  his  seat  for  the  family  borough 
of  Trim,  and  for  three  years  danced  at 
court  balls,  flirted  with  the  women, 
drank  and  gambled  with  the  men,  and 
voted  with  his  party,  as  a  lively  young 
military  and  aristocratic  Whig  mem- 
ber of  the  Irish  House  of  Commona 
might  have  been  expected  to  do.  One 
serious  attachment  fixed  his  affections. 
Among  the  court  beauties,  Catherine 
Pakenham,  third  daughter  of  the 
Earl  of  Longford,  was  conspicuous. 
Arthur  Wesley  sought  her  hand,  but 
Lady  Longford  would  not  consent  to 
bestow  her  daughter  on  the  young  sol- 


ARTHUR,   DUKE   OF  WELLINGTON. 


581 


threw  their  right  into  such  confusion, 
that  a  cavalry  charge  quickly  converted 
discomfiture  into  a  headlong  rout.  The 
enemy,  who  left  upwards  of  2,000  on 
the  field,  fell  back  on  Seringapatam. 
Harris  increased  his  army  to  35,000 
men  and  100  guns,  and  on  5th  April 
sat  down  before  that  famous  fortress, 
which  was  defended  by  22,000  men 
and  240  pieces  of  artillery.  In  order 
to  clear  his  front,  the  general  directed 
Baird  to  sweep  a  tope — a  cultivated 
grove  which  lay  between  his  lines  and 
the  walls  of  the  place — which  was 
done  without  opposition,  but  the 
Mysoreans  occupied  it  next  day,  and 
Colonel  Wellesley  was  ordered  to  re- 
peat the  operation,  and  to  occupy  the 
position  in  a  night  attack.  Wellesley 
led  on  the  33d,  a  native  regiment,  to 
the  assault,  whilst  Shaw  made  a  com- 
bined attack  on  the  flank.  Their 
troops  were  received  with  a  severe 
fire,  became  disordered  in  the  dark, 
and  retired,  leaving  prisoners  in  the 
hands  of  the  enemy,  who  were  put  to 
death  with  brutal  cruelty  by  Tippoo 
next  day,  and  Wellesley  himself,  who 
was  hurt  in  the  knee,  had  some  diffi- 
culty in  finding  his  way  back  to  camp, 
when  he  went  to  the  general  with  "  a 
good  deal  of  agitation,  to  say  he  had 
not  carried  the  tope,"  in  which,  how- 
ever, Shaw  had  established  himself. 
Next  day  the  tope  of  Sultanpettah 
was  occupied;  but  Wellesley  came, 
he  says,  to  "  a  determination  never  to 
duffer  an  attack  to  be  made  by  night 
on  an  enemy  who  is  prepared  and 
strongly  posted,  and  whose  posts  have 
not  been  reconnoitred  by  daylight." 
Established  on  the  ground,  lines  were 
rapidly  traced,  batteries  erected,  and 


fire  opened.  On  2d  May,  one  of  the 
principal  magazines  of  the  place  ex- 
ploded, and  destroyed  much  of  the 
works,  as  well  as  of  the  moral  power,  of 
the  defenders ;  and,  on  the  4th,  Baird 
led  2,500  British  troops  and  1,800 
natives  to  the  breaches.  In  spite  of  a 
desperate  resistance,  in  which  Tippoo 
fought  like  a  common  soldier,  the  en- 
trance to  the  town  was  effected.  Tip- 
poo, twice  wounded,  and  fighting  like 
a  hero,  was  thrown  down  amid  a  heap 
of  dead  and  dying  men.  An  English 
soldier  seeing  the  glitter  of  precious 
stones  on  his  sash,  sought  to  pull  it 
from  his  body,  but  Tippoo  gathered 
up  all  his  strength,  and  raising  him- 
self on  one  hand,  cut  the  soldier  across 
the  knee.  In  an  instant  the  Euro- 
pean's musket  was  pressed  to  the 
brow  of  the  Sultan,  who  fell  dead, 
open  -  eyed,  and  glaring  defiance, 
amidst  the  corpses  of  his  soldiers  in 
front  of  his  palace-gate.  Seringapa- 
tam, with  enormous  treasure,  estima- 
ted at  the  value  of  £20,000,000  by  one 
of  the  prize-agents,  fell  into  the  hands 
of  the  captors,  never  to  leave  them  more. 
A  scene  of  plunder  and  violence,  in 
which  the  soldiery,  native  and  Euro- 
pean, revelled  in  the  wildest  license 
and  excesses,  was  only  terminated  by 
the  active  measures  of  Wellesley,  who 
was  appointed  commandant  of  the 
place,  and  who  restored  order,  as  he 
says  himself,  on  the  5th  May,  "  by  the 
greatest  exertions,  by  hanging,  flog- 
ging, etc.,  in  the  course  of  the  day." 
His  share  of  the  plunder  was  £7,000 
in  money,  and  3,000  pagodas  in  pearls ; 
and  he  at  once  proposed  to  apply  it  to 
pay  his  brother  the  sum  he  had  ad- 
vanced for  the  purchase  of  his  lieuten 


582 


AKTHUK,  DUKE  OF  WELLINGTON. 


ant-colonelcy,  but  Lord  Mornington 
generously  refused.  His  appointment, 
in  its  results,  more  than  justified  Ms 
brother's  partiality,  and  his  powers  of 
administration,  his  diplomatic  skill  in 
dealing  with  the  armed  chiefs  of  My- 
sore who  still  held  out,  his  moderation 
in  victory,  were  not  less  conspicuous 
than  the  military  qualities  which  had 
already  fixed  on  the  youthful  colonel 
the  eyes  of  India. 

After  a  series  of  brilliant  exertions 
in  the  field,  attended  by  the  most  im- 
portant victories  in  the  repression  of 
robber  hordes,  and  the  conduct  of  the 
war  against  the  Mahrattas,  the  health 

O  ' 

of  Wellesley  began  to  give  way.  He 
obtained  leave  of  absence;  and,  quit- 
ting the  Deccan,  arrived  at  Calcutta 
in  August ;  but,  ere  he  took  his  pas- 
sage homewards,  the  Nizam  gave  the 
Indian  Government  reason  to  believe 
that  it  required  a  vigilant  eye  and  a 
firm  hand  in  his  territory,  and  Welles- 
ley  proceeded  to  Seringapatam  by 
the  orders  of  the  Governor  -  General. 
There  he  was  prostrated  by  fever ;  but, 
in  February,  1805,  having  restored  the 
district  to  comparative  tranquility,  and 
having  regained  his  health  sufficiently, 
he  was  enabled  to  gratify  his  longing 
for  a  larger  field  of  service  and  his  na- 
tural ambition,  as  well  as  to  get  away 
from  the  endless  disputes  which  were 
raised  by  the  native  courts  as  to  the 
true  meaning  of  his  treaties.  As  a 
reward  for  his  services,  the  king  nomi- 
nated him  a  supernumerary  Knight  of 
the  Bath  ere  he  left  India;  and  on 
JOth  March,  Major-General  Sir  Arthur 
Wellesley  left  the  continent  where,  as 
executor  of  Iris  brother's  policy,  and 
as  $  soldi-er  wfrp  /carried  out  in  the 


field  the  plans  in  which  he  was  part 
adviser  in  the  cabinet,  he  had  increas- 
ed threefold  the  territories  to  which 
in  no  equal  period  since  their  first 
marvellous  spring  from  the  seat  of  the 
trader  to  the  throne  of  the  monarch, 
had  the  East  India  Company  made 
such  vast  increment. 

When  Wellesley  arrived  in  England, 
in  September,  1805,  the  French  were 
marching  once  more  to  meet  Europe 
in  arms ;  and  in  November  he  sailed 
as  brigadier-general  to  Holland,  with 
Lord  Cathcart's  ill-advised  expedition, 
only  to  hear  the  echoes  of  the  guns  of 
Austerlitz,  which  announced  that  the 
effort  to  make  a  diversion  was  too  late. 
The  safety  of  the  English  shores  had 
once  more  to  be  consulted,  and  Sir 
Arthur  Wellesley  was  appointed  to 
command  the  brigade  at  Hastings, 
which  he  raised  to  a  considerable  de- 
gree of  efficiency.  In  April,  1806,  he 
married  Lady  Catherine  Pakenham,  his 
old  love  when  he  was  a  gay  young 
aid-de-camp  in  the  Irish  court.  She 
had  been  attacked  by  small-pox  imme- 
diately after  his  departure  for  India, 
and  she  wrote  to  tell  him  that  her 
beauty  was  gone,  and  that  he  was  a 
freeman;  but  Sir  Arthur  Wellesley, 
the  famous  Indian  soldier,  had  returned 
to  his  country  to  claim  the  hand  of  his 
betrothed,  and  her  hand  was  freely 
given.  After  a  short  interval  of  com 
parative  obscurity,  Sir  Arthur  was  re 
turned  to  parliament,  in  time  to  con- 
tribute materially,  by  his  simple, 
straightforward  answers,  and  by  his 
knowledge  of  the  facts,  to  the  success- 
ful defence  of  Lord  Morning  ton, 
against  the  charges  brought  by  Mr. 
Paul  and  Lord  Folkestone  of  extrava 


ARTHUR,  DUKE  OF  WELLINGTON. 


583 


gance  and  corruption.  Paul  died  by 
his  own  hand,  after  a  debauch  in  a 
gaming-house,  and  Lord  Folkestone's 
inculpatory  motion  was  defeated  by  a 
considerable  majority.  When  the 
Portland  administration  was  formed, 
after  the  death  of  Mr.  Fox,  in  1806, 
Sir  Arthur  Wellesley  was  selected  to 
fill  the  office  of  chief  secretary  in  Ire- 
land, under  the  Duke  of  Richmond, 
and  he  was  at  once  plunged  into  the 
stormy  politics  which  were  the  result 
of  the  agitation  for  Catholic  emancipa- 
tion ;  but  he  had  not  been  more  than 
a  few  months  engaged  in  the  strug- 
gles in  which  his  political  ties  and  his 
personal  convictions  made  him  a  de- 
cided partisan,  ere  he  was  called  upon 
to  act  once  more  in  a  military  capacity, 
as  general  of  a  division  of  infantry 
under  Lord  Cathcart,  in  the  expedition 
against  Copenhagen. 

Scarcely  was  the  development  of 
this  scheme  of  aggression  against  Den- 
mark commenced,  than  it  was  met  by 
Napoleon  with  a  "  contre-coup  "  in  the 
Peninsula.  In  September,  1807,  he 
prepared  to  take  a  signal  vengeance 
for  the  secret  treaty  in  which  the  Por- 
tuguese ambassador  had  joined  the 
representative  of  Russia  and  the  Prince 
of  Peace,  with  the  design  of  making 
war  on  France  the  moment  that  she 
could  be  attacked  with  impunity. 
Junot  crossed  the  Bidassoa,  and  the 
Prince-Regent  of  Portugal  endeav- 
ored to  obtain,  by  immediate  conces- 
sion of  all  the  points  demanded  of 
him,  the  forbearance  of  Napoleon ;  but 
the  latter  had  settled  his  plans,  and 
was  not  to  be  propitiated.  He  pur- 
sued his  great  designs,  and  persevered 
till  the  glorious  storm  of  the  Spanish 


insurrection  scattered  his  policy  to  the 
winds.  On  November  12,  Junot 
marched  from  Salamanca,  and  eighteen 
days  afterwards  entered  Lisbon,  which 
the  house  of  Braganza  quitted  without 
a  blow,  and  with  full  coffers.  But, 
although  Napoleon  might  have  been 
right  in  the  axiom,  that  a  nation  bru- 
talized by  the  monks  and  the  Inquisi- 
tion could  not  be  formidable,  he  was 
wrong  in  supposing  that  Spain,  after 
many  years  of  the  worst  form  of  gov- 
ernment, and  the  most  degrading  for- 
mulas of  religion,  had  utterly  lost  the 
sacred  fire  of  national  life,  and  the 
animating  principle  of  the  chivalry 
which  had  roused  her  people  to  shake 
off  the  yoke  of  invading  races  in  times 
gone  by.  The  Portuguese  established 
a  junta  at  Oporto,  the  first  acts  of 
which  were  to  solicit  the  aid  of  Eng- 
land, and  to  make  common  cause  with 
the  Spanish  national  leaders.  Sir 
Arthur  Wellesley,  who  had  been  pro- 
moted to  the  rank  of  Lieutenant-Gen 
eral,  in  April,  1808,  in  the  following 
July  was  sent  to  Spain,  with  a  force 
of  12,000  men.  Having  effected  a 
landing  in  Portugal,  without  opposi- 
tion, on  the  9th  of  August,  he  began 
his  march  towards  Lisbon,  and  on  the 
17th  was  attacked  by  Junot,  at  Vi- 
meira.  The  French  were  repulsed,  with 
loss.  After  the  ensuing  Convention  of 
Cintra,  Wellesley  returned  to  his 
duties  in  Ireland,  and  to  his  seat  in 
parliament.  Then  came  the  defeat  of 
Sir  John  Moore,  and  the  vigorous 
operations  of  Napoleon  in  the  penin- 
sula. The  successes  of  the  French 
again  brought  Wellesley  into  the  field. 
On  the  call  of  the  government,  he  at 
once  resigned  the  Irish  secretaryship, 


584 


ARTHUR,  DUKE  OF  WELLINGTON. 


and  his  seat  in  Parliament;  he  hast- 
ened the  nagging  movements  of  the 
government,  superintended  every  de- 
tail, watched  over  every  department 
of  the  expedition  as  soon  as  he  was 
named  to  lead  it ;  and  on  his  arrival  in 
Lisbon,  on  the  22d  of  April,  1809,  he 
lost  not  a  moment's  time  in  taking 
measures  to  avert  the  blow  which  was 
Impending  over  Portugal.  Inspired 
by  his  arrival,  remembering  his  pre- 
vious successes,  his  vigor  and  military 
qualities,  the  patriots  at  Lisbon  took 
heart,  and  seconded  all  his  efforts  to 
put  his  troops  in  a  state  of  efficiency. 
Soult  heard  of  the  arrival  of  the  Brit- 
ish, under  their  young  general,  at  the 
very  moment  that  he  was  in  perplexity 
respecting  the  movements  of  the  col- 
umns intended  to  co-operate  with  him ; 
but  he  was  strongly  posted  at  Oporto, 
and  his  communications  were*  open 
with  Ney.  Having,  after  a  little  de- 
lay, satisfied  himself  of  the  exact  posi- 
tion of  the  enemy,  Wellesley  adopted 
the  extraordinary  resolution  of  attack- 
ing Soult  by  leading  his  troops  across 
the  Douro  in  face  of  the  enemy.  But, 
in  order  to  shake  Soult's  confidence,  he 
despatched  Beresford  with  a  strong 
column,  to  manoeuvre  against  the 
enemy's  left,  while  he  advanced  upon 
Oporto  with  24,000  men.  Soult  was 
prepared,  as  he  conceived,  against  any 
attempt  of  the  kind ;  but,  in  order  to 
ensure  the  safety  of  his  corps,  he  de- 
tached Loison,  with  6,000  men,  to 
cover  his  retreat  in  case  of  accidents. 
Then,  removing  the  floating  bridge, 
sweeping  all  the  boats  over  to  his  own 
side  of  the  river,  he  awaited  the  ad- 
vance of  the  British,  with  the  huge 
wet-ditch  of  the  Douro,  nearly  a  thou- 


sand feet  broad,  in  his  front.  While 
Soult  was,  it  is  said,  enjoying  from 
his  quarters  the  discomfiture  of  the 
English,  Sir  Arthur,  with  his  keen 
coup  cFceil,  on  the  12th  of  May,  was 
surveying  the  shores  of  the  rapid 
river.  He  perceived  a  stone  building 
on  the  other  bank,  at  a  point  which  a 
bend  in  the  course  of  the  stream  in 
some  measure  screened  from  the  obser- 
vation of  Soult.  Could  he  occupy  that 
building,  it  would  cover  the  passage 
of  his  men  till  they  were  sufficient  in 
strength  to  hold  their  own  !  How  to 
do  that  was  the  difficulty.  But  for- 
tune was  not  unkind  to  onexwho  knew., 
how  to  take  advantage  of  her  favor. 
Among  the  reeds  by  the  bank  of  the 
river  a  little  boat  lay  hid.  Colonel 
Waters,  one  of  those  men  who  are 
sometimes  found  whenever  a  gallant 
action  of  enormous  importance  is  to  be 
done,  was  at  hand,  and  he  at  once 
crossed  over  in  the  boat  to  the  other 
side,  "cut  out"  some  large  barks 
drawn  up  under  the  north  shore,  and 
returning  with  them,  afforded  means 
of  transport  for  seventy  or  eighty  men 
across  the  Douro,  for  the  immediate 
occupation  of  the  coveted  building. 
Once  established,  Wellesley  hurried 
over  men  as  fast  as  he  could,  and 
brought  up  his  artillery  to  cover  their 
landing.  Soult,  discovering  the  suc- 
cess of  this  movement  on  his  flank, 
despatched  battalion  after  battalion  to 
drive  the  intruders  into  the  river ;  but 
the  English  soldiers  were  in  occupa- 
tion ;  boats  were  found  all  along  the 
bank ;  the  British  threw  themselves 
over  in  masses,  and  were  enabled  to 
make  an  offensive  movement  against 
Oporto,  and  in  the  evening  were  mas- 


AKTHUR,  DUKE  OF  WELLINGTON. 


585 


fcers  of  the  place  ;  and  Sir  Arthur  was, 
it  is  affirmed,  entertaining  his  staff  at 
the  very  excellent  dinner  provided  by 
Soult's  famous  chef  de  cuisine  for  his 
master.  Soult,  who  suffered  greatly 
m  his  retreat,  joined  Ney  with  little 
more  than  half  his  original  force ; 
while  Wellesley  was  obliged  to  halt  at 
Oporto  in  order  to  get  his  army  in 
order  for  the  next  stroke,  which  he  in- 
tended to  deal  with  a  heavy  hand. 
There  were  no  less  than  250,000  French 
in  the  Peninsula,  but  they  were  split 
up  into  detachments  and  garrisons ;  and 
the  largest  force  in  the  field  consisted 
of  about  28,000  men,  under  Marshal 
Victor,  whom  the  obstinacy  of  Cuesta 
saved  from  the  blow  Wellesley  had 
prepared  for  him,  by  turning  his  posi- 
tion at  Torre  Mocha,  and  thus  cutting 
him  off  from  Madrid.  Soult,  however, 
had  received  the  command  of  three 
corps  cFann&j  and  he  prepared  to 
threaten  Wellesley 's  communication 
with  Lisbon  with  one  portion  of  his 
force,  while  he  held  Beresford,  and  the 
Spaniards,  and  Portuguese  in  check, 
and  vigorously  besieged  Ciudad  Eo- 
drigo  and  Almeida  with  the  remain- 
der. Under  these  circumstances,  Wel- 
lesley would  have  to  decide  on  pass- 
ing the  Tagus,  and,  having  effected 
his  junction  with  Cuesta,  to  attack 
Victor.  If  that  course  were  undesira- 
ble, he  could  open  the  road  by  Ciudad 
Rodrigo  and  Almeida,  with  the  aid  of 
the  Portuguese  and  Spaniards,  secur- 
ing his  flank  and  roar ;  or,  finally,  he 
could  direct  his  course  upon  Madrid 
at  once.  Although  he  had  much  diffi- 
culty in  providing  mules  and  trans- 
port, and  considerable  anxiety  to  con- 
tend with  on  other  accounts,  Welles- 
74 


ley,  who  was  scarcely  aware  of  the 
enormous  concentration  of  the  French 
on  the  left  of  the  Tagus,  where  Ney 
and  Soult  had  effected  a  junction,  re- 
solved on  the  bold  step  of  invading 
Spain ;  and,  with  that  object,  steps 
were  taken  in  time  for  the  assemblage 
of  the  army  at  Placencia. 

Early  in  July,  Wellesley,  with 
22,000  British,  began  his  march  in  the 
direction  of  Madrid ;  on  the  8th  ho 
stood  fast  at  Placencia,  and  soon  after- 
wards joined  the  Spaniards,  56,000 
strong,  under  the  old,  obstinate  and 
incompetent  Cuesta,  at  Oropesa.  Vic- 
tor, meantime,  had  been  reinforced  by 
all  the  troops  which  Joseph  Bonaparte 
could  collect,  and  covered  the  capital : 
while  large  columns  of  French  troops 
were  hastening  down  the  valley  of  the 
Tagus.  On  the  28th  of  July,  after  a 
severe  encounter  on  the  preceding 
evening,  Joseph  Bonaparte  attacked 
the  allies  at  Talavera.  The  onslaughts 
of  the  French  were  repulsed  with  great 
slaughter,  and  they  left  17  guns  on  the 
field,  as  well  as  upwards  of  7,000 
killed  and  wounded. 

The  miserable  infatuation  of  Cuesta, 
the  imbecility  or  criminal  inactivity 
of  Venegas,  the  loss  of  the  pass  of 
Banos,  and  the  approach  of  Soult, 
decided  Sir  Arthur,  as  the  only 
means  of  extricating  his  army  from 
the  difficulty  out  of  which  the  victory 
of  Talavera  had  not  taken  it,  to  re- 
treat again  into  Portugal ;  and  by  some 
rapid,  fortunate,  and  well  arranged 
combinations  and  marches,  he  fell 
back  on  Merida,  Badajoz,  and  Lisbon, 
leaving  the  Spaniards  to  their  fate, 
and  regarding  them  with  a  disgust 
and  indignation  which  determined. 


586 


ARTHUR,   DUKE  OF  WELLINGTON. 


him  never  to  trust  British  soldiers  in 
line  frith  them  again.  He  had  been 
taught,  indeed,  that,  with  such  allies, 
active  offensive  operations  against  the 
powerful  armies  of  France  were,  if 
glorious  in  individual  action,  singular- 
ly destitute  of  political  success.  The 
Spanish  army  made  a,n  attempt  to  lib- 
erate Madrid,  but  they  were  speedily 
taught  to  feel  the  value  of  their  allies, 
and  their  own  inefficiency,  for,  on  the 
5th  of  November,  Mortier,  with  a  force 
not  one-half  their  strength,  attacked 
them  at  Ocana,  and  at  one  blow  fairly 
annihilated  them,  and  swept  them  off 
the  face  of  the  country;  and  on  the 
28th,  Del  Parques'  corps  shared  the 
same  fate  at  the  hands  of  Kellermann. 
Wellesley  thus  permitted  the  Span- 
iards to  form  an  opinion  of  their  own 
value  when  unassisted,  and  was  soon 
exposed  to  their  importunity,  and  to 
the  clamor  of  the  press  at  home,  in 
consequence  of  his  attitude. 

Sir  Arthur  Wellesley  was,  neverthe- 
less, created  Baron  Douro  of  Wellesley, 
and  Viscount  Wellington  of  Talavera, 
and  of  Wellington  in  the  county  of 
Somerset ;  but  the  government  lent  him 
but  lukewarm  support  in  his  earnest 
proposals  for  the  effective  prosecution 
of  the  war,  which  was  now  assuming 
gigantic  proportions.  Furious  with 
anger  on  the  receipt  of  the  intelli- 
gence that  Joseph  had  been  defeated 
at  Talavera,  Napoleon  directed  that 
nine  corps,  under  the  most  famous  mar- 
shals and  generals  of  France,  should 
be  assembled  in  Spain,  and  at  one 
time  had  all  but  put  himself  at  their 
head;  but  he  was  prevented  by  the 
preparations  for  his  marriage,  and  for 
the  more  stringent  enforcement  of  the 


great  continental  blockade.  He  fond- 
ly believed  that  Massena  would  drive 
the  English  into  the  sea ;  and  the  open- 
ing successes  of  the  war,  Avhich  gave 
the  French  Ciudad  Kodrigo  and  Al- 
meida, as  good  bases  of  operations, 
seemed  to  promise  that  fortune  would 
at  last  flee  from  other  fields  to  1  ight  on 
her  once-favored  but  long-neglected 
eagles.  The  campaign  of  1810  open- 
ed, indeed,  under  circumstances  which 
seemed  to  promise  no  good  result. 
Wellington  beheld,  with  unquailing 
eye,  the  storm  which  was  gathering. 
With  all  disposable  reinforcements, 
and  with  the  aid  of  Beresford's  Portu- 
guese, his  whole  force  consisted  of 
about  120,000  men;  of  whom  40,000 
were  in  reserve  and  in  garrison.  The 
flower  of  the  French  army,  under  their 
world-famed  marshals,  was  before  and 
around  him  in  more  than  twice  his 
greatest  strength.  His  plans  were 
soon  taken,  and  speedily  acted  upon. 
Whilst  the  French  were  slowly  ad- 
vancing from  the  north,  Wellington 
having  moved  towards  the  Mon- 
dego,  was,  with  extraordinary  en- 
ergy, directing  the  construction  of 
the  famous  lines  at  Torres  Vedras, 
to  which  Massena's  corps  was  pur 
suing  him.  In  vain  Lord  Welling 
ton  besought  the  Portuguese  govern- 
ment to  stop  the  march  of  the  enemy 
by  laying  waste  the  country  and  de- 
vastating the  crops.  It  was  evident 
that  the  French  could  depend  on  the 
resources  of  the  country  whilst  they 
were  in  pursuit,  and  that  if  anything 
were  to  be  done  in  the  way  of  depriv- 
ing them  of  natural  magazines,  the 
British  army  could  alone  be  relied  on 
for  the  work.  In  order  to  show  the 


ARTHUR,  DUKE  OF  WELLINGTON. 


587 


enemy  that  it  was  not  from  disorgani- 
zation, fear,  or  incapacity  to  cope  with 
him  in  the  open  field,  Wellington  re- 
solved to  make  one  stand  in  the  face 
of  his  foes,  and  give  them  a  knock- 
down blow  ere  he  retired  to  his  strong- 
hold. Ere  his  arrangements  were  quite 
complete  for  the  defence  of  the  position 
hshad  selected  on  the  Sierra  de  Busaco, 
he  was  confronted  by  Ney,  with  40,000 
men  on  the  25th  of  September;  but 
Massena,  did  not  attack  till  the  27th, 
and  the  delay  gave  the  "  Hindoo  cap- 
tain "  the  invaluable  opportunity  of 
concentrating  the  whole  of  his  troops, 
and  filling  up  the  gaping  blanks  in  the 
line  of  his  defence.  The  attack  of  the 
French,  gallantly  delivered  on  a  po- 
sition so  strong  that  even  Ney  and  Ju- 
Qot  declared  it  ought  not  to  be  assailed, 
and  so  far  testified  to  the  skill  with 
which  it  was  chosen,  was  utterly  de- 
feated with  great  and  disproportionate 
loss.  In  one  month  Massena  gave  up 
the  game.  Scarcely  had  his  rear-guard 
removed  off  the  ground,  than  Wel- 
lington issued  from  his  lines  and  hung 
upon  him,  perhaps  with  more  caution 
than  enterprise,  for  every  mile  of  his 
masterly  retreat. 

Before  Wellington  could  venture 
to  proceed  with  offensive  operations 
against  the  French  in  Spain,  it  was 
necessary  for  him  to  open  his  commu- 
nications, and  to  free  his  rear  and 
flanks  of  the  fortified  places  which 
afforded  to  his  enemy  cover  and  sup- 
port. Chief  among  these  was  Bada- 
joz, which  Soult  had  taken  early  in 
his  proceedings,  and  had  strongly  gar- 
risoned. The  French  defended  the 
place  with  brilliant  courage.  Welling- 
ton, twice  repulsed  from  the  breaches 


of  Badajoz,  was  compelled  to  raise  the 
siege  on  the  10th  of  June,  and  to  turn 
his  arms  against  Ciudad  Rodrigo  on 
the  northern  frontier,  where,  taking  up 
post  in  a  strong  position,  he  established 
a  blockade  of  the  ill-provisioned  gar- 
rison. The  moment  Marmont  heard  of 
the  danger  of  Rodrigo,  he  collected 
60,000  men,  and,  in  the  month  of  Sep- 
tember, threw  a  reinforcement  and 
abundance  of  provisions  into  the  place, 
in  face  of  Wellington,  whose  blockade 
was  raised  without  the  possibility  of 
his  preventing  it.  Money,  with  equip- 
ment and  material  of  all  kinds,  were 
sent  from  England ;  and  while  the 
French,  supposing  that  Wellington 
could  attempt  nothing  further  for  the 
year,  were  retired  to  their  winter 
quarters,  their  indefatigable  adver- 
sary was  laboring  night  and  day  to 
accomplish  the  reduction  of  the  fort- 
ress they  believed  to  be  quite  secure. 
With  the  utmost  secrecy  he  prepared 
a  bridge  to  throw  across  the  Agueda, 
on  the  opposite  bank  of  which  stands 
Ciudad  Rodrigo,  and  brought  up  the 
deepened  channel  of  the  Douro  the 
siege-train  which  had  been  shipped  at 
Lisbon,  so  as  to  induce  the  enemy  to 
think  it  was  meant  for  Cadiz.  His 
transport  was  all  in  readiness.  In  the 
second  week  in  January,  1812,  he 
crossed  the  Agueda,  and  sat  down  be- 
fore the  astonished  garrison  of  Rod- 
rigo; and  on  the  19th.  the  place  was 
stormed,  in  spite  of  a  very  fierce  re- 
sistance, which  cost  many  valuable 
lives.  Having  secured  his  prize  by 
this  brilliant  feat,  Wellington  turned 
his  attention  once  more  to  the  capture 
of  Badajoz. 

Wellington's  popularity  again  rose 


588 


ARTHUR,   DUKE   OF   WELLINGTON. 


with  fine  weather.  He  was  created 
earl,  and  was  voted  £2,000  a  year,  in 
England ;  a  grandee  of  the  first-class, 
and  Duke  of  Ciudad  Rodrigo  in 
Spain ;  and  Marquis  of  Torres  Vedras 
in  Portugal,  where  he  was  already 
marshal,  general,  and  Count  of  Vimi- 
era.  Relieved  by  the  withdrawal  of 
the  French  from  the  valley  of  the 
Tagus,  he  now  proceeded  to  the  in- 
vestment of  Badajoz.  The  resistance 
was  stern  and  desperate,  but  the 
place  fell,  after  one  of  the  most  bloody 
assaults  ever  delivered,  in  proportion 
to  the  men  engaged,  on  the  morning  of 
the  7th  of  April,  the  glory  of  the  vic- 
tors being  tarnished  by  the  excesses 
of  the  troops,  who  for  three  days 
revelled  in  every  species  of  license, 
notwithstanding  the  efforts  of  their 
chief  and  of  their  officers.  On  the 
17th  of  June,  Wellington  crossed 
the  Tonnes  and  entered  Sala- 
manca, which  Marmont  evacuated 
the  previous  evening,  leaving  ade- 
quate garrisons  in  the  forts,  who 
made  a  vigorous  defence  against  the 
English,  and  thereby  enabled  Mar- 
mont to  collect  about  25,000  men, 
with  whom  he  attacked  Wellington 
on  the  20th.  On  the  22d,  he  was  re- 
inforced bv  about  11,000  men,  and  re- 

«/  /  / 

peated  his  demonstrations ;  at  last,  on 
the  22d  of  July,  after  much  manoeuv- 
ring and  marching,  sometimes  within 
musket-shot  of  each  other,  the  two 
armies  met  at  Arapiles,  near  Sala- 
manca— Marmont  with  42,000  men 
and  seventy-four  guns,  Wellington 
with  43,000  English,  3,500  Spaniards, 
and  sixty  guns;  and  after  a  contest 
which  is  described  by  M.  Brialmont 
as  "  rief  and  murderous,"  the  French 


were  beaten  at  all  points,  and  fairly 
driven  off  the  field,  with  the  loss  o, 
6,000  men,  eleven  guns,  two  eagles,  and 
six  standards ;  whilst  the  English  lost 
5,444  men,  and  were  so  far  exhausted 
that  they  could  not  enter  on  the  pur- 
suit of  the  routed  enemy  with  the 
vigor  which  might  have  been  desired. 
Madrid  was  now  occupied  for  a 
short  time  by  the  British,  who  were 
however  withdrawn  upon  the  advance 
of  superior  forces  of  the  French — Wei 
lington,  after  an  ineffectual  attempt 
upon  Burgos,  retiring  to  his  lines  of 
defence  in  winter  quarters.  Taking 
the  opportunity  of  visiting  the  Cortes, 
then  sitting  at  Cadiz,  ho  was  received 
with  every  mark  of  honor,  was  decor- 
ated with  the  order  of  the  Toison 
d'Or,  and  was  invested  with  powers, 
which  were  practically  uncontrolled, 
over  the  Spanish  troops.  The  Portu- 
guese created  him  Duke  of  Vittoria. 
The  king  of  England  elevated  him  to 
the  rank  of  marquis;  and  the  parlia- 
ment gave  him  a  grant  of  £100,000, 
with  part  of  which  he  purchased  the 
estate  of  Wellington,  which  was  sup- 
posed to  have  belonged  to  the  Colleys 
in  times  gone  by ;  and  he  received 
permission  to  wear  the  crosses  of  St. 
George,  St.  Andrew,  and  St.  Patrick, 
in  augmentation  of  his  arms.  Re- 
inforcements also  were  poured  in  from 
England,  and  the  tremendous  disaster 
which  had  befallen  the  arms  of  France 
in  the  snows  of  Russia,  animated  the 
country  with  the  hope  that  the  contest 
in  Spain  could  not  long  be  protracted 
by  a  chief,  whose  position  would  im 
pose  on  him  the  necessity  of  withdraw- 
ing every  soldier  he  could  rally  to  his 
standard  to  defend  his  own  frontiers 


ARTHUR,  DUKE  OF  WELLINGTON. 


589 


The  campaign  of  1813  was  opened 
oy  Wellington  at  the  end  of  May, 
with  200,000  men  of  all  nations  and 
arms,  and  he  knew  how  much  was  ex- 
pected at  his  hands  by  the  magnitude 
of  the  favors  conferred  on  him,  for  he 
was  now  a  Knight  of  the  Garter  and 

o 

Colonel  of  the  Blues.  At  the  battle 
of  Vittoria,  on  the  21st  of  June,  Wel- 
lington gave  a  death-blow  to  the 
French  in  Spain.  The  enemy  lost 
7,000  killed,  wounded,  and  prisoners ; 
151  guns,  their  military  chests,  their 
plunder  and  baggage,  and  a  spoil 
which  for  some  days  disorganized  the 
victorious  army.  The  Prince-Regent 
sent  to  the  conqueior  the  baton  of  an 
English  marshal,  in  return  for  the 
staff  of  Jourdain.  which  was  found 
011  the  field.  After  an  exciting  cam- 
paign in  the  Pyrenees,  followed  by 
the  engagement  with  Soult  before 
Toulouse,  the  ensuing  March,  the  war 
was  at  an  end,  and  Wellington  was  at 
liberty  to  return  to  England. 

His  sagacity,  political  knowledge, 
and  discrimination  had  been  so  re- 
markably displayed  in  his  manage- 
ment of  Spanish  affairs,  and  in  his 
correspondence,  that  the  ministry  re- 
quested him,  the  instant  he  arrived  in 
England,  from  the  head  of  his  army, 
to  proceed  as  the  ambassador  of  Eng- 
land to  the  court  of  France;  indeed, 
as  early  as  May  4th,  1814,  he  had 
gone  up  from  Toulouse  to  Paris,  and 
had  made  the  acquaintance  of  some  of 
the  most  remarkable  men  in  the  capi- 
tal. Scarcely  had  he  repaired  to  his 
post,  ere  the  state  of  affairs  required 
his  presence  at  Madrid,  where  the  in- 
fluence of  his  personal  character,  and 
the  soundness  of  his  judgment  were 


amply  tested  in  composing  the  dis- 
putes at  that  unhappy  court,  and  in- 
terposing between  the  follies  and  im- 
becility of  the  monarch,  and  the  angry 
turbulence  of  his  subjects.  Having, 
on  his  way  back  from  Spain  through 
France,  broken  up  his  army  at  Toulouse 
in  a  simple  order  of  the  day,  the  Duke 
returned  to  England,  where,  if  his 
stern  nature,  rather  contemptuous  of 
popularity,  could  have  been  satisfied 
with  the  most  enthusiastic  reception,  he 
must  have  enjoyed  complete  content 
ment.  On  the  28th  of  June,  however,  he 
received  those  constitutional  marks  of 
favor,  to  which  he  was  not  and  could  not 
be  indifferent.  At  one  sitting  he  be- 
came developed  in  the  House  of  Lords 
through  all  the  stages  of  the  peerage, 
as  baron,  viscount,  earl,  and  marquis, 
to  the  highest  title  of  honor ;  and  tho 
Duke  of  Wellington  claimed,  as  Lord 
Eldon  said,  on  his  first  entrance  to  the 
House,  all  the  dignities  which  the 
Crown  could  confer. 

In  August,  the  Duke,  in  proceeding 
towards  Paris  to  execute  the  functions 
of  ambassador  at  the  court  of  France, 
to  which  he  had  been  appointed,  took 
occasion,  in  company  with  three  engi- 
neer officers,  to  examine  the  frontier 
line  of  the  Netherlands;  and  in  tho 
course  of  his  survey,  he  certainly 
pointed  out  the  position  of  Waterloo 
as  one  which  should  be  occupied  to 
cover  Brussels  in  case  of  a  French  in- 
vasion. For  five  months  Wellington 
remained  at  Paris,  every  week  of 
which  was  marked  by  some  earnest 
work,  by  honest  and  disregarded  coun- 
sels to  France  or  Spain,  and  by  unpro- 
ductive attempts  to  inspire  the  Bour- 
bons with  notions  of  moderation  and 


590 


ARTHUil,  DUKE  OF  WELLINGTON. 


forbearance.  His  duty  done,  the  Duke 
of  Wellington  was  accredited  to  Vi- 
enna as  the  representative  of  England 
«t  the  famous  Congress. 

On  the  8th  of  March,  the  startling 
news  reached  Vienna,  that  Napoleon 
was  marching  upon  Paris.  On  the 
20th,  the  Bourbon  was  a  fugitive,  and 
the  Corsican  sat  once  more  on  the 
throne  of  France.  But  the  Alliance 
still  lived.  The  name  of  Bonaparte 
was  a  talisman  to  shake  every  legiti- 
mist government  to  the  foundation 
and  to  reopen  the  fountains  of  fear 
and  misery  which  had  flowed  over 
every  country  of  Europe.  If  Napo- 
leon desired  peace,  he  would  have  de- 
sired it  in  vain.  The  Castlereaghs,  the 
Metternichs,  the  Nesselrodes  of  the  day 
had  vowed  eternal  hostility  to  the 
Empire — they  could  not  recognise  the 
fact  Europe  has  been  forced  to  admit, 
that  the  principles  on  which  the  Em- 
pire was  founded  must  exercise  their 
influence  as  long  as  France  is  a  nation. 
They  were  bent  only  on  destroying 
the  eagle  that  had  fluttered  their  dove- 
cots from  the  Rhine  to  the  Neva.  They 
determined  to  maintain  the  treaty  of 
Paris  at  every  cost;  and  Wellington 
deserves  no  great  credit  for  predicting 
that  Napoleon  must  fall  under  the 
cordial  united  efforts  of  the  sovereigns 
of  Europe.  Under  the  impulse  of  the 
common  terror,  these  sovereigns  turned 
their  eyes  on  one  man  as  their  only 
champion.  The  Duke  of  Wellington 
was  entreated  to  take  the  command 
of  the  armies  of  England,  the  Nether- 
lands, and  Prussians  in  the  Low  Coun- 
tries, which  would  be  supported  as 
speedily  as  possible  by  the  legions  of 
Austria  and  Russia.  He  arrived  in 


Brussels  on  the  5th  of  April,  and  was 
for  some  time  in  doubt  whether  he 
should  besrin  an  offensive  movement 

O 

upon  France,  or  await  the  development 
of  the  designs  of  his  mighty  antago- 
nist. Napoleon  anticipated  the  inva- 
sion of  France  by  marching  at  once 
upon  the  Anglo-Prussian  army  in  Bel- 
gium by  the  line  of  the  Sambre.  Al- 
though Wellington  thought  such  an 
offensive  movement  rather  improbable, 
he  had  by  no  means  excluded  it  from  the 
category  of  possibilities ;  but  it  must 
be  acknowledged  he  did  not  act  as  if  he 
thought  Napoleon  would  move  in  the 
direction  he  actually  took.  It  was 
three  o'clock  on  the  loth  of  June 
when  General  Van  Muffling  informed 
the  Duke,  as  he  was  seated  at  table 
with  the  Prince  of  Orange,  that  the 
French  had  attacked  the  Prussian  out- 
posts, and  the  whole  army  was  inirne 
diately  afterwards  ordered  to  march 
to  its  left, 

As  a  strategical  fight,  Waterloo  does 
not  rank  very  highly.  The  Duke  had 
no  great  opinion  of  it ;  and  Napoleon  V 
sole  object  seems  to  have  been  to  over- 
whelm the  British  and  the  allies  by 
brute  force  before  the  Prussians  could 
come  up.  The  immediate  results,  in- 
deed, were  those  which  Wellington 
claimed  for  this — "the  first  and  last 
of  fields ! — king-making  victory  !" 

His  honors  accumulated  year  by 
year.  Waterloo  Bridge  was  opened 
by  the  Prince  Regent,  with  a  salute 
of  202  guns,  Apsley  House  was  built 
for  him  at  the  cost  of  the  nation  by 
Wyatt.  The  Hyde  Park  Achilles  was 
the  result  of  a  subscription  made  by 
the  ladies  of  England,  in  1819-21, 
and  it  was  erected  in  1832,  the  same 


ARTHUR,  DUKE   OF  WELLINGTON. 


591 


year  in  which  the  famous  "shield  was 
presented  to  him  by  the  city  of  Lon- 
don. In  1818  he  was  made  Master- 
General  of  the  Ordnance;  in  1819  he 
became  Governor  of  Plymouth ;  in 
1820  Colonel  of  the  Rifle  Brigade; 
and  when  he  died,  the  Duke  of 
Wellington  was  Field-Marshal  in  the 
armies  of  England,  Austria,  Russia, 
and  Prussia.  But  with  his  honors  his 
popularity  by  no  means  increased. 
There  had  been  a  riotous  and  disaffect- 
ed spirit  generated  among  the  people ; 
conspiracies  were  discovered;  Habeas 
coitus  was  suspended  ;  open  insurrec- 
tions actually  broke  out ;  Peterloo 
was  a  hapless  parody  of  civil  war; 
and  the  Six  Acts  and  Cato  House 
conspiracy  were  ominous  signs  of  the 
temper  of  the  times.  The  French 
revolution  had  strengthened  the  hands 
of  the  so-called  Tories  so  much,  that 
the  early  struggles  for  Catholic  eman- 
cipation and  reform  seemed  Quixotic 
and  hopeless ;  but  the  people  were 
gaining  strength,  and  the  conscious- 
ness of  their  power  gave  an  intemper- 
ance to  their  language  and  their  acts 
which,  after  the  struggle  was  over, 
would  have  shocked  them.  For  ten 
years,  Lord  Liverpool's  cabinet  and 
principles  had  governed  without 
change,  and  there  was  no  sign  of 
relaxation  of  the  old  policy  till  Mr. 
Canning  became  Colonial  Secretary  in 
1822.  The  king  was  not  liked;  he 
was  believed  to  have  been  treacherous 
to  his  old  liberal  associations  and 
friends,  and  to  put  his  trust  in  a 
policy  of  mere  repression.  The  prose- 
cution of  the  queen  raised  the  out- 
cry against  the  ministry  to  a  storm, 
and  the  Duke  of  Wellington,  who, 


as  a  cabinet  minister,  had  agreed  to 
the  measure,  came  in  for  a  full  share 
of  the  public  indignation.  A  cor- 
dial feeling  and  mutual  appreci- 
ation existed  between  him  and  Sir 
Robert  Peel,  who  became  Home  Secre- 
tary in  1822;  but  there  was  certainly 
no  cordiality  on  the  Duke's  part  to- 
wards George  Canning;  and  when  he 
was  appointed  Premier,  the  Duke  re- 
signed his  offices  of  Master-General  of 
Ordnance  and  Commander-in-Chiof. 
Nay,  more,  he  moved  the  amendment 
in  the  Lords  to  the  bill  sent  up  by 
Canning  and  Huskisson  as  the  first 
instalment  of  the  settlement  of  the 
Corn-Law  question.  In  four  months 
Mr.  Canning,  tortured  by  candid 
friends,  open  enemies,  lukewarm  sup- 
port, and  vindictive  opposition,  had 
died.  Goderich's  short  ministry  was 
called  into  existence  only  to  expire, 
and  the  Duke  on  its  dissolution  was 
sent  for  by  the  king,  and  requested  to 
undertake  the  task  of  forming  a  gov- 
ernment. He  had,  only  eight  months 
before,  in  answer  to  some  hints  that  he 
was  agitating  for  the  honor,  declared 
his  conviction  to  the  Lords  that  he 
was  quite  unfit  to  be  Premier,  and  he 
now  laid  himself  open  to  some  ill- 
natured  remarks  in  consequence  of  hia 
accepting  the  post  notwithstanding  his 
declaration..  When  Lord  John  Russell 
carried  the  repeal  of  the  Test  and  Cor 
poration  Acts  in  the  House  of  Com 
mons  by  a  majority  of  forty-four,  the 
Duke,  to  the  astonishment  of  some  of 
his  friends,  the  indignation  of  others, 
and  the  joy  of  his  enemies,  accepted 
the  situation,  and  calmly  made  himself 
master  of  it  by  carrying  these  very 
bills  through  the  Upper  House,  in 


592 


ARTHUR,  DUKE   OF  WELLINGTON. 


spite  of  the  opposition  of  some  of  his 
own  colleagues,  with  whom,  on  the 
representation  of  Mr.  Canning,  the 
Duke  could  not  entertain  any  cordial 
or  sympathetic  relations. 

For  two  years  the  Duke  maintained 
his  position.  At  home  and  abroad 
great  questions  presented  themselves. 
Surrounded  by  difficulties,  and  aggra- 
vated by  the  fierce  personal  spirit 
which  pervaded  politics,  the  influence 
of  which  led  the  Duke  once  more  into 
the  field,  and  induced  him  to  fight 
a  duel  with  Lord  Winchilsea,  times 
not  less  stormy  followed.  The  Duke 
was  an  opponent  of  reform,  when  the 
heart  of  the  active  majority  of  the 
nation  was  set  upon  it.  He  proposed 
to  recognise  Don  Miguel,  whilst  he  re- 
sisted the  Catholic  claims,  and  the  ad- 
mission of  the  Jews  into  Parliament  and 
dissenters  into  the  universities;  and 
his  support  gave  firmness  and  resolu- 
tion to  the  party  with  which  he  acted. 
Although  he  found  himself  unable  to 
form  a  ministry,  when  requested  to  do 
so  in  1832,  on  the  defeat  of  the  gov- 
rnent  by  Lord  Lyndhurst,  he  felt  less 
hesitation  in  monopolizing  for  the 
time  nearly  all  the  offices  of  State,  in 
November,  1834,  on  the  resignation  of 
Lord  Melbourne,  till  Sir  Robert  Peel 
could  return  from  Italy  to  constitute 
a  short-lived  administration.  On  such 
questions  as  Catholic  emancipation, 
the  Reform  Bill,  the  Corn-Laws,  if 
the  Duke  was  the  oracle  of  expedi- 
ency, he,  like  oracles  of  old,  suffered 
violence,  and  spoke  on  compulsion  the 
*  logic  of  facts."  By  the  advice  of 


the  Duke,  whom  the  Queen  consulted 
in  any  emergency,  Sir  Robert  Peel 
was  called  in,  with  greater  success,  to 
occupy  the  position  of  Prime-minister 
in  1841.  Her  Majesty  requested  the 
Duke  to  take  the  command  of  the 
army,  of  which  Lord  Hill's  ill-health 
rendered  him  incapable,  and  in  that 
office  he  continued  till  his  death.  His 
active  political  life  ceased.  His 
speeches  were  always  listened  to  with 
respect ;  his  presence  gave  dignity  to 
the  highest  assembly  in  the  world ; 
his  nation  learned  to  be  proud  of  him 
with  a  pride  in  which  there  was  rever- 
ence ;  he  was  the  friend  and  counselor 
of  his  sovereign.  In  his  later  days  he 
had  some  alarming  illnesses ;  but  after 
a  time  he  was  seen  as  usual  riding 
down  from  the  Horse  Guards  to  the 
House,  and  his  speeches  appeared  in 
the  papers  at  longer  intervals.  In 
August,  1852,  he  went  down  to  Wai- 
mer  Castle,  where  he  expected  some 
guests,  and  on  the  13th  of  September, 
he  was  engaged  in  preparing  for  their 
reception  with  unusual  activity  and 
energy.  Next  day  he  complained  of 
difficulty  of  breathing,  which  did  not 
yield  to  the  medical  means  employed. 
His  illness  increased  ;  he  became 
speechless  and  insensible ;  and  ere 
the  evening  he  had  passed  peacefully 
away. 

The  Duke's  remains,  after  "  lying  in 
state"  at  Chelsea,  were  conveyed  to 
St.  Paul's  on  the  18th  of  November, 
and  interred  in  the  vaults  with  the 
solemn  dignity  and  pomp  of  a  state 
funeral  decreed  by  Parliament. 


;&• 

.•;"•; 


. 

,!-.: 

• 


/tt^trtr*'' 


THOMAS     MOORE. 


my  ai.cestors  on  the  paternal 
side,"  writes  Thomas  Moore,  in 
a  fragmentary  posthumous  autobio- 
graphy, "I  know  little  or  nothing, 
having  never,  so  far  as  I  can  recollect, 
heard  my  father  speak  of  his  father  or 
mother,  of  their  station  in  life,  or  of 
anything  at  all  connected  with  them. 
My  uncle,  Garret  Moore,  was  the  only 
member  of  my  father's  family  with 
whom  I  was  ever  personally  acquain- 
ted. Of  the  family  of  my  mother,  who 
was  born  in  the  town  of  Wexford,  and 
whose  maiden  name  was  Codd,  I  can 
speak  more  fully  and  satisfactorily; 
and  my  old  gouty  grandfather,  Tom 
Codd,  who  lived  in  the  corn  market, 
Wexford,  is  connected  with  some  of 
my  earliest  remembrances.  Besides 
being  engaged  in  the  provision  trade, 
he  must  also,  I  think  (from  my  recol- 
lection of  the  machinery)  have  had 
something  to  do  with"  weaving.  But, 
though  thus  humble  in  his  calling,  he 
brought  up  a  large  family  reputably, 
and  was  always,  as  I  have  heard,  much 
respected  by  his  fellow-townsmen.  It 
was  some  time  in  the  year  1778,  that 
Anastasia,  the  eldest  daughter  of 
this  Thomas  Codd,  became  the  wife  of 
my  father,  John  Moore,  and  in  the  fol- 
75 


lowing  year  I  came  into  the  world. 
My  mother  could  not  have  been  much 
more  than  eighteen  (if  so  old)  at  the 
time  of  her  marriage,  and  my  father 
was  considerably  her  senior.  Indeed, 
I  have  frequently  heard  her  say  to  him 
in  her  laughing  mood,  'You  know, 
Jack,  you  were  an  old  bachelor  when  I 
married  you.'  At  this  period,  as  I 
always  understood,  my  father  kept  a 
small  lime  store  in  Johnson's  Court, 
Grafton  street,  Dublin ;  the  same 
court,  by- the- way,  where  I  afterwards 
went  to  school.  On  his  marriage, 
however,  having  received,  I  rather 
think,  some  little  money  with  my 
mother,  he  set  up  business  in  Aungier 
street,  No.  12,  at  the  corner  of  Little 
Longford  street ;  and  in  that  house, 
on  the  28th  of  May,  1779, 1  was  born." 
In  this  autobiography,  Moore  is  par- 
ticularly careful  in  recording  the  Warm 
affection,  assiduous  attention  and  good 
sense,  mingled  with  her  love,  which 
led  his  mother,  during  his  earliest 
years,  to  lose  no  opportunity  of  pro- 
viding for  his  education,  and,  what 
was  of  hardly  less  importance,  as  it 
proved  in  his  case,  than  a  knowledge 
of  the  elements  of  learning,  of  forward- 
ing in  various  ways  his  intercourse 

(593) 


594 


THOMAS  MOORE. 


with  society.  Under  these  influences, 
Moore  entered  upon  life  at  the  outset 
as  something  of  a  prodigy ;  in  fact,  he 
became,  in  his  very  childhood,  a  "  lion," 
the  part  he  was  eo  accustomed  to  play 
in  after  years  in  the  spheres  of  London 
and  Paris.  Profiting  more  than  might 
have  been  expected  from  the  instruc- 
tions of  his  first  schoolmaster,  a  wild, 
odd,  drunken  fellow,  who  "  was  hardly 
ever  able  to  make  his  appearance  in 
the  school  before  noon,  when  he  would 
generally  whip  the  boys  all  round  for 
disturbing  his  slumbers,"  young  Moore 
was  brought  forward  by  his  mother, 
who  encouraged  in  him  a  fondness  for 
recitation  as  "a  sort  of  show  child." 
When  he  was  scarce  four  years  old,  he 
recited  some  satirical  verses  which  had 
just  appeared  at  the  expense  of  the 
patriot  Grattan.  As  soon  as  he  was 
old  enough  to  encounter  the  crowd  of 
a  large  school,  he  was  introduced  to  a 
grammar-school  in  Dublin,  kept  by  a 
distinguished  teacher,  a  Mr.  Whyte, 
who,  some  years  before,  had  the  fa- 
mous Richard  Brinsley  Sheridan 
among  his  pupils,  and  had  been  able 
to  discover  nothing  to  promise  any 
ability  in  that  eminent  wit;  in  fact, 
had  pronounced  him,  as  he  doubtless 
seemed  at  the  time,  "  a  most  incorrigi- 
ble dunce."  Young  Moore  appeared 
to  better  advantage,  flourishing  in  the 
school  exhibitions,  and  especially  in 
the  private  theatrical  performances,  in 
which  the  master  was  a  zealous  leader 
and  actor.  This  led  to  doggrel  verse- 
making  by  the  promising  pupil,  who 
also  early  acquired  some  little  knowl- 
edge of  music,  with  the  aid  of  an  "  old 
lumbering  harpsichord,"  which  had 
been  thrown  on  his  father's  hands  as 


part  payment  of  a  debt  from  some 
bankrupt  customer.  Having  an  agree- 
able voice  and  taste  for  singing,  he  was 
brought  forward  to  entertain  the  jovial 
parties  of  the  family,  arid  gained  some 
applause  in  the  songs  of  Patrick  in  the 
"  Poor  Soldier,"  in  private  theatricals. 
At  the  age  of  eleven  he  recited  an  epi- 
logue of  his  own  composition,  at  one 
of  these  entertainments.  In  fact,  his 
accomplishments  had  so  impressed 
themselves  upon  his  friends,  that  about 
the  beginning  of  the  year  1792,  an  en- 
thusiastic acquaintance,  an  author 
and  artist  who  had  started  a  monthly 
publication  in  Dublin,  proposed  to  in- 
sert in  it  a  portrait  of  the  juvenik 
Moore  among  the  public  celebrities  of 
the  time,  an  honor  which  his  mother 
had  too  much  good  sense  to  allow  him 
to  accept,  much,  as  he  tells  us,  to  her 
son's  disappointment.  In  the  follow- 
ing year  a  measure  of  Catholic  emanci- 
pation was  passed,  by  which  persons 
of  that  faith  were  permitted  to  enter 
the  Dublin  University,  a  privilege 
which,  strange  as  it  now  seems,  had 
been  previously  denied  them.  Both 
the  parents  of  Moore  being  Catholics, 
this  offered  a  new  opportunity  for  the 
advancement  of  their  son.  His  mother, 
always  on  the  look-out  for  his  promo- 
tion, was  anxious  to  carry  out  a  long- 
cherished  scheme  of  bringing  him  up 
to  the  profession  of  the  law.  Accord- 
ingly, by  the  aid  of  a  Latin  usher 
attached  to  Mr.  Whyte's  school,  he  was 
pushed  rapidly  forward  in  his  classical 
studies,  and  in  the  summer  of  1794 
became  a  student  of  Trinity  College, 
Dublin.  His  kind-hearted  usher  had 
not  only  taught  him  Latin  and  Greek, 
but  infused  in  him,  as  he  tells  us,  "  a 


THOMAS  MOORE. 


597 


in  May,  and  after  a  few  days  left  it  in 
the  frigate  which  had  brought  him 

O  ^  O 

hither,  sailing  for  Norfolk,  with  the 
intention  of  leaving  the  vessel  at  that 
place,  making  a  hurried  tour  along  the 
seaboard,  visiting  Washington,  Phila- 
delphia, Niagara,  and  Canada,  joining 
the  ship  at  Halifax  on  her  way  to 
England.  All  of  this  he  accomplished. 
Early  in  November,  he  is  again  upon 
the  deck  of  the  "  Boston,"  sailing  from 
Nova  Scotia  for  old  England. 

He  is  again  welcomed  by  the  Prince 
Regent,  and  enters  on  his  old  round  of 
gaieties  in  London  society,  meanwhile 
getting  into  shape  a  new  volume  of 
poetry  covering  his  transatlantic  expe- 
riences and  inspirations,  which  ap- 
peared in  quarto  in  1806,  with  the 
title,  "Epistles,  Odes,  and  other  Po- 
ems." The  book  fell  at  once  into  the 
hands  of  Jeffrey,  who  published  a 
trenchant  review  of  it  in  the  "  Edin- 
burgh," commenting  unsparingly  on 
its  weak  points  of  amatory  license, 
and  where  the  author  was  not  moved 
to  directness  by  his  satiric  petulance, 
its  vague  and  wordy  dithyrambics. 
A  challenge  of  a  most  premptory 
character,  giving  the  lie  direct  to  the 
reviewer,  was  concocted  by  Moore, 
and  sent  by  his  friend  Hume.  Jeffrey 
replied  by  his  friend  Horner,  and 
Moore,  having  borrowed  a  case  of  pis- 
tols from  William  Spencer,  his  broth- 
er poet,  the  parties  met  on  a  bright 
summer  morning,  the  llth  of  August, 
1806,  at  Chalk  Farm,  the  noted  duel- 
ing ground  in  the  vicinity  of  London. 
It  was  their  first  introduction  to  one 
another.  While  the  seconds,  unused 
to  the  business,  were  slowly,  and,  as  it 
proved,  clumsily  loading  the  pistols, 


the  poet  and  his  new  acquaintance 
were  walking  up  and  down  the  field  to- 
gether ;  and,  coming  in  sight  of  the  op- 
erations,  Jeffrey  was  somewhat  grimly 
entertained  by  an  Irish  story  which 
Moore  related  of  Billy  Egan,  a  barris- 
ter, who,  once  being  out  on  a  similar 
occasion,  and  sauntering  about  while 
the  pistols  were  being  prepared,  his 
antagonist,  a  fiery  little  fellow,  called 
out  to  him  angrily  to  keep  his  ground. 
"  Don't  make  yourself  unaisy,  my  dear 
fellow,"  said  Egan,  "  sure,  isn't  it  bad 
enough  to  take  the  dose,  without  being 
by  at  the  mixing  up  ?"  In  this  pleas- 
ant humor,  the  parties  took  their  sta- 
tions for  the  encounter.  The  seconds 
retired,  the  pistols  were  raised,  when 
certain  police  officers  rushed  from  be- 
hind a  hedge  and  knocked  the  hostile 
weapons  out  of  their  hands,  and  con- 
veyed the  principals  to  Bow  Street, 
where  they  were  bound  over  to  keep 
the  peace.  The  information  which  led 
to  the  arrest  had  been  given  at  a  din- 
ner party  the  evening  before,  by  Spen- 
cer. Fashionable  society  could  not 
spare  its  favorite.  As  for  Moore  and 
Jeffrey,  unhappy  as  had  been  the  man- 
ner of  their  acquaintance,  they  seem 
to  have  been  delighted  with  one  an- 
other when  it  was  once  formed.  There 
was  an  annoying  sequel  to  the  affair,  in 
the  circumstance  that  on  the  examina- 
tion of  the  pistols  at  the  police  office, 
it  was  found  that  Jeffrey's  pistol  had 
no  bullet,  it  having,  as  was  proved  by 
the  report  of  the  seconds,  evidently 
falleri  out  while  in  the  hands  of  the 
officers.  This  gave  rise  to  the  report 
that  the  whole  was  mere  child's  play, 
the  duel  to  be  fought  with  leadless 
bullets.  A  year  or  two  later,  when 


598 


THOMAS  MOOKE. 


Byron,  another  young  poet,  in  his 
turn  smarting  from  the  "Edinburgh 
Review,"  was  looking  about  for  mate- 
rial for  his  famous  satire,  "  English 
Bards  and  Scotch  Reviewers,"  he  in- 
troduced this  incident  into  his  poem, 
of  which  it  formed  one  of  the  most 
amusing  and  aggravating  passages. 

Moore  had  published  a  statement 
immediately  after  the  duel,  giving  the 
true  account  of  the  matter  of  the  bul- 
lets, and  was  consequently  led,  when 
Byron  re-issued  his  version  of  the  af- 
fair in  a  second  edition  in  1810,  to  re- 
sent the  publication  as  giving  the  lie 
to  his  own  narrative  of  the  transac- 
tion. He  addressed  Byron,  to  whom 
he  was  personally  a  stranger,  on  the 
subject ;  but  the  letter  not  being  de- 
livered by  the  friend  to  whom  it  was 
entrusted,  the  noble  author  just  set- 
ting out  on  his  foreign  tour,  Moore,  on 
his  return,  in  1811,  re-opened  a  corres- 
pondence ;  which,  while  hinting  strong- 
ly at  the  duello  in  its  courteous  terms, 
opened  a  door  of  easy  escape.  Byron 
met  the  affair  in  the  same  complimen- 
tary Pickwickian  way,  and  the  whole 
thing  ended  in  a  very  satisfactory  man- 
ner at  the  table  of  Rogers,  the  poet, 
where  Byron  met  thehost,  Campbell, 
the  author  of  the  "  Pleasures  of  Hope," 
and  Moore  himself  for  the  first  time. 
It  was  the  beginning  of  the  life-long 
intimacy  of  Moore  and  Byron.  As  in 
the  quarrels  of  lovers,  these  prepara- 
tions for  the  duello  ended  oddly 
enough,  in  both  cases,  in  warm  and 
lasting  friendships. 

After  his  return  from  America, 
Moore  held  for  a  time  his  Bermuda 
appointment,  the  duties  of  which 
were  discharged  by  a  deputy,  while 


he  was  stil]  looking  to  his  friend  Lord 

O 

Moira  for  further  political  patronage. 
Meanwhile  he  appears  to  have  been 
quite  at  home  for  long  periods  at  his 
Lordship's  residence,  Douington  Park, 
enjoying  its  free  quarters  and  availing 
himself  of  its  fine  library,  welcomed 
by  the  owner  when  he  was  present, 
and  master  of  the  resources  of  the 
place  when  he  was  absent.  It  was 
Moore's  good  fortune  ever  to  find  a 
patron  and  share  in  the  social  advant- 
ages of  the  English  aristocracy.  Official 
preferment  was  not  at  hand,  however, 
and  though  Moore  expected  for  himself 
a  commission  ship  in  Ireland,  he  suc- 
ceeded only  in  obtaining  the  appoint- 
ment of  barrack  master  in  Dublin  for 
his  father.  A  surer  resource  he  found 
in  the  exertion  of  his  own  talents,  the 
favor  of  the  public,  and  the  steady  re- 
ward of  the  booksellers.  His  associa- 
tion with  James  Power,  the  music  sell- 
er, "  a  semi-musical,  semi-literary  con- 
nection," as  it  is  described  by  their  com- 
mon friend,  Thomas  Crofton  Croker,  be- 
gan with  the  publication  of  the  first  num- 
ber of  what  proved  the  most  popular 
and  remunerative  work  of  the  author, 
the  "  Irish  Melodies,"  in  1807.  It  lasted 
for  twenty-seven  years,  during  which 
the  poet  received  by  contract  an  annual 
payment  of  several  hundred  pounds 
from  the  publisher,  with  large  advances, 
as  he  stood  in  need,  which  grew  into  a 
considerable  debt  on  the  part  of  the 
author.  The  "Melodies"  were  pub- 
lished in  parts,  at  intervals,  the  work 
being  completed  in  its  present  form  in 
1834.  Deriving  their  inspirations  from 
the  native  music  of  his  country,  and 
colored  by  the  patriotic  aspiration  of 
youth,  they  are  the  best  and  finest 


THOMAS  MOORE. 


599 


representation  of  his  sensibilities  and 
genius.  They  have  been  translated 
into  various  languages,  called  forth 
the  talents  of  various  artists  for  their 
illustration,  notably  among  them  the 
poet's  fellow-countryman,  Maclise,  in 
the  sumptuous  edition  published  by 
the  Longmans,  and  there  are  certainly 
few  English  homes  throughout  the 
world  where  their  voice  has  not  been 
heard. 

The  composition  of  the  "  Melodies," 
as  we  have  seen,  covered  a  long  period 
of  time.  The  poet,  meantime,  was 
vvorkirig  another  vein  of  composition, 
in  a  series  of  satirical  epistles  and  oc 
casional  verses.  "  Corruption  "  and  "  In- 
tolerance," two  Poems  "  addressed  to  an 
Englishman  by  an  Irishman,"  appear- 
ed anonymously  from  his  pen  in  1808, 
followed  the  next  year  by  "  The  Scep- 
tic, a  Philosophical  Satire."  These  at- 
tempts in  the  stately  Juvenalian  style 
of  satire,  as  the  author  subsequently 
described  them,  met,  he  admits,  with 
but  little  success,  never  having  at- 
tained, till  he  included  them  in  his 
collected  works,  the  honors  of  a  second 
edition.  "  I  found,"  said  he,  "  that 
lighter  form  of  weapon,  to  which  I  af- 
terwards betook  myself,  not  only  more 
easy  to  wield,  but,  from  its  very  light- 
ness, perhaps,  more  sure  to  reach  its 
mark."  The  vein  to  which  he  alludes 
was  worked  to  great  advantage  in  his 
contributions  to  the  "  Morning  Chroni- 
cle," and  in  the  sportive,  playful,  yet 
sufficiently  pungent  volume,  "  Inter- 
cepted Letters ;  or,  The  Twopenny 
Post -Bag,  by  Thomas  Brown,  the 
Younger,"  which  he  gave  to  the  world 
in  1813.  In  these  gay  epistles,  the 
satire,  which  was  mainly  directed 


against  the  Prince  Regent,  with  an 
occasional  foray  upon  the  lighter  fol- 
lies of  fashionable  drawing-rooms  and 
entertainments,  was  sheathed  in  humor, 
and  lost  more  than  half  its  bitterness 
in  the  exquisite  versification. 

While  these  were  Moore's  public 
literary  employments,  an  episode  in 
his  round  of  social  entertainments  led 
to  his  marriage  with  a  gentle  lady, 
whose  quiet,  unobtrusive  domestic  vir- 
tures  so  long  adorned  the  simple  home 
of  the  poet,  where  he  often  found 
solace  from  the  round  of  fashionable 
gaieties  to  which  he  seems  to  have 
been  bound  by  a  sort  of  professional 
attachment,  and  which  indeed  came  as 
a  necessary  relief  to  his  overcharged 
literary  exertions  in  his  hours  of  pri- 
vacy. The  circumstances  which  led 
to  this  marriage  we  find  narrated  in 
an  interesting  sketch  of  the  poet's  ca- 
reer, in  the  "Edinburgh  Review." 
"  During  one  of  Moore's  Irish  trips," 
says  the  writer,  "he  formed  part  of 
that  famed  theatrical  society  which 
figured  on  the  Kilkenny  boards ;  the 
male  actors  being  amateurs,  and  the 
female  ones  mostly,  if  not  all,  profes- 
sional, having  at  their  heads  the  '  star 
of  the  hour,  the  celebrated  Miss  O'NeiL 
Moore  acted  well,  especially  in  comedy, 
as  we  have  been  informed  by  one  who 
was  fortunate  enough  to  witness  those 
remarkable  performances  about  the 
year  1810.  Among  other  parts,  his 
personation  of  *  Mungo  '  in  the  agreea- 
ble opera  of  '  The  Padlock,'  was,  it  is 
said,  eminently  happy.  Two  sisters, 
both  extremely  attractive  in  person,  as 
well  as  irreproachable  in  conduct,  also 
formed  a  part  of  this  *  corps,'  acting, 
singing,  and  ever  and  anon  dancing,  to 


600 


THOMAS  MOORE. 


the  delight  of  their  audience.  With 
one  of  these  beauties,  Moore  fell  des- 
perately in  love,  and  being  regarded 
favorably  in  return  by  Miss  Elizabeth 
Dyke,  he  a  few  months  later  united 
himself  in  marriage  with  her,  without, 
it  would  seem,  acquainting  his  parents 
with  his  intention.  The  ceremony 
took  place  at  St.  Martin's  church,  in 
London,  in  March,  1811,  and  Mrs. 
Thomas  Moore  was  introduced  to  her 
husband's  London  friends  during  the 
same  spring.  By  these  she  was  cor- 
dially received,  although  there  was 
but  one  opinion  among  them  as  to  the 
imprudence  of  the  step  in  Moore's  no- 
toriously narrow  circumstances." 

In  addition  to  the  "  Melodies,"  songs 
and  occasional  satires  which  gave 
profitable  employment  to  Moore's  pen 
during  the  next  few  years,  there  is 
to  be  mentioned  an  opera  entitled 
"  M.  P.;  or,  The  Blue  Stocking,"  which 
was  produced  on  the  stage  the  year 
of  his  marriage  with  moderate  success. 
It  is  not  included  in  the  standard  edi- 
tion of  his  works,  though  it  contrib- 
utes a  few  songs  to  the  collection.  It 
was  not  long  after  this  that  Moore 
turned  his  thoughts  to  the  composi- 
tion of  a  poem  of  some  magnitude,  in- 
troducing Eastern  scenes  and  ima- 
gery. The  notion  commended  itself  to 
the  poet's  luxurious  imagination.  He 
applied  himself  diligently  to  the  ne- 
cessary courses  of  reading,  studied  all 
the  poetry,  legendary  and  historical 
literature  of  the  region  accessible  in 
the  works  of  D'Herbelot,  Sir  William 
Jones,  the  Oriental  Collections  and 
Asiatic  Researches,  and  especially  the 
works  of  travellers  in  the  East,  which 
presented  many  curious  traits  of  local 


manners,  and,  out  of  the  whole,  in  the 
end  produced  the  varied,  composite 
result  entitled  "  Lalla  Rookh."  The 
work  was  the  labor  of  several  years. 
The  idea  of  its  preparation  was  first 
conceived  in  1813,  with  a  view  of  en- 
tering the  field  with  a  narrative  poem 
of  sufficient  length  to  challenge  a 
share  of  the  popularity  enjoyed  by  the 
"  Lady  of  the  Lake,"  and  several  oth- 
er publications  in  quarto  of  Sir  Wal- 
ter Scott.  It  was  not,  however,  till 
five  years  later  that  the  poem,  dedica- 
ted to  the  poet  Rogers,  was  published. 
It  then  proved  a  great  and  immediate 
success,  passing  rapidly  through  several 
editions. 

Immediately  after  the  publication  of 
Lalla  Rookh,  Moore  set  out  with  his 
friend  Samuel  Rogers,  on  a  visit  to 
Paris,  which  he  pronounced  on  his 
arrival  in  a  letter  to  his  music  pub- 
lisher, Power,  "the  most  delightful 
world  of  a  place  I  ever  could  have  im- 
agined," adding  his  intention,  if  he 
could  persuade  his  wife  "  Bessy "  to 
the  measure,  to  take  up  his  abode 
there  for  two  or  three  years.  Return- 
ing from  this  flying  visit  to  his  cottage 
home  at  Hornsey,  he  found  his  child 
Barbara  mortally  ill;  and,  after  her 
death,  which  shortly  ensued,  he  took 
up  his  abode  at  a  new  residence,  which 
he  occupied  for  the  remainder  of  his 
life,  Sloperton  Cottage,  an  elegant  and 
comfortable  rural  abode  in  the  imme- 
diate vicinity  of  Bowood,  the  seat  of 
his  friend  the  Marquis  of  Lansdowne. 
Here  we  find  him  at  the  beginning  of 
the  following  year,  1818,  engaged  upon 
his  next  publication,  the  fruit  of  his 
late  French  excursion,  "The  Fudge 
Family  in  Paris,"  a  production  of 


THOMAS  MOOKE. 


601 


Humphrey  Clinker  type ;  or,  to  follow 
a  poetical  precedent,  of  Anstey's  de- 
lightful picture  of  the  society  of  the 
celebrated  watering-place,  the  "New 
Bath  Guide."  Moore's  letter-writing 
family*  en  joy  a  similar  vein  of  pleasan- 
try and  agreeable  lightness  of  versifi- 
cation, as  they  exhibit  the  humors  of 
the  observers,  and  the  entertaining  in- 
cidents at  Paris  then,  with  a  zest  of 
novelty  newly  reopened  after  the  war 
with  Napoleon,  to  the  English  travel- 
ling world.  Nor,  with  the  lighter 
amusements  of  the  place,  does  the  poet 
of  freedom  and  patriotism  forget  the 
graver  political  issues  of  the  times,  as 
he  utters  an  indignant  protest  against 
the  despotic^Holy  Alliance. 

In  the  midst  of  the  incense  and  ap- 
plause so  fairly  earned  by  his  recent 
publications,  which  seemed  to  have 
secured  to  the  poet  an  unwonted 
prosperity  in  the  future,  he  was  sud- 
denly dismayed  by  the  intelligence 
that  the  deputy  whom  he  had  left  in 
his  office  at  Bermuda,  and  for  whose 
acts  he  was  personally  responsible, 
after  keeping  back  what  was  due  to 
him,  had  absconded  with  the  proceeds 
of  a  sale  of  ship  and  cargo  deposited  in 
his  hands.  •  Moore  was  summoned  to 
make  good  the  loss,  amounting,  it  was 
claimed,  to  about  six  thousand  pounds. 
He  was  offered  assistance  in  this  emer- 
gency by  various  friends ;  but,  with 
his  customary  love  of  independence,  he 
preferred  to  rely  on  his  own  exertions 
to  extricate  him  from  the  embarrass- 
ment. The  effort  at  settlement  cost 
him  much  anxiety  and  trouble,  the 
unsettled  claim  hanging  over  him  for  a 
long  time  before  he  was  finally  freed 
from  the  responsibility.  Meanwhile 
76 


he  set  vigorously  to  work  upon  his 
first  prose  work  of  consequence,  the 
Life  of  Richard  Brinsley  Sheridan; 
from  the  labor  upon  which  he  was 
diverted  by  a  second  tour  to  the  con- 
tinent, accompanying,  this  time,  his 
friend  Lord  John  Russell.  Returning 
from  this  tour,  having  established  him- 
self in  Paris,  in  "  a  little  fairy  suite  of 
apartments,  an  entresol  in  the  Rue 
Chautereine,  at  two  hundred  and  fifty 
francs  a  month/'  he,  on  the  1st  of  Jan- 
uary, 1820,  conducts  thither  his  wife 
Bessy,  whom  he  had  gone  to  meet  at 
Calais.  They  are  presently  domiciled 
in  a  cottage  in  the  Champs  Ely  sees,  in 
the  Allee  des  Veuves,  which,  with  the 
exception  of  a  short  residence  at 
another  house  near  Paris,  for  the  next 
year  and  a  half  becomes  their  home. 
For  a  time  the  poet  is  engaged  in  an 
attempt  to  get  into  shape  his  projected 
Epistles  from  Italy,  in  which  he.  pro- 
posed to  introduce  his  old  machinery 
of  the  Fudge  Family.  He  also  occu- 
pies himself  in  his  literary  employ- 
ments with  the  composition  of  new 
numbers  of  the  Irish  Melodies,  and  new 
studies,  which  result  in  due  time  in 
"The  Epicurean,"  and  the  poetic 
flights  of  "The  Loves  of  the  Angels." 
There  were  several  flying  visits  of 
Moore  to  England,  before  he  returned 
with  his  wife  to  that  country,  in  the 
first  of  which,  in  September,  1821,  he 
went  in  disguise,  providing  himself, 
by  advice  of  the  women,  with  a  pair 
of  mustachios  as  a  mode  of  conceal- 
ment, and  at  the  suggestion  of  Lord 
John  Russell,  assuming  the  name,  in 
the  Dover  packet,  and  at  the  inn  of 
"  Mr.  Dyke."  He  was  on  this  occasion 
handsomely  entertained  by  the  Duke 


THOMAS  MOOEE. 


of  Bedford,  at  Woburn,  and  visited 
his  parents  at  Dublin.  There  were 
various  negotiations  going  on  mean- 
while for  the  settlement  of  the  Ber- 
muda claims,  which  now  resulted  in 
their  reduction  to  one  thousand 
pounds,  a  sum  which  was  chiefly  made 
up  by  a  temporary  loan  by  Lord  Lans- 
downe,  immediately  repaid  by  a  draft 
on  Murray,  an  advance  on  the  B^ron 
Memoirs,  and  the  generous  gift  of  two 
hundred  pounds  from  Lord  John 
Russell,  the  produce  of  his  published 
"  Life  of  Lord  Russell,"  a  sum  he  had 
set  apart,  as  he  alleged,  for  sacred  pur- 
poses ;  and,  "  as  he  did  not  mean  to 
convert  any  part  of  it  to  the  expenses 
of  daily  life,  so  he  hoped  to  hear  no 
more  of  it."  This  made  the  poet  once 
more  a  free  man.  London  and  the 
great  world  of  English  society  were 
now  again  open  to  him,  and  after 
some  months  further  sojourn,  with 
occasional  interruptions  of  absence  in 
Paris,  he  took  up  his  residence  in  the 
English  cottage,  near  Bowood. 

His  new  publications  in  the  year 
1823,  were  "Fables  for  the  Holy 
Alliance,"  a  sheet  of  satirical  verses  on 
an  old  theme ;  "  Rhymes  on  the  Road," 
the  work  already  spoken  of,  embody- 
ing his  travelling  experiences  on  his 
Italian  tour,  and  the  "Loves  of  the 
Angels,"  a  poetical  romance  in  which 
he  returned  to  the  materials  he  had 
drawn  upon  in  "  Lalla  Rookh."  The 
last-mentioned  poem,  or  rather  series 
of  poems,  the  author  tells  us,  was 
founded  on  the  Eastern  story  of  the 
Angels  Harut  and  Marut,  and  the 
Rabbinical  fictions  of  the  lives  of 
Uzziel  and  Sharaehazai;  the  subject 
presenting  "an  allegorical  medium 


through  which  might  be  shadowed  out 
the  fall  of  the  soul  from  its  original 
purity,  the  loss  of  light  and  happiness 
which  it  suifers  in  pursuit  of  the 
world's  perishable  pleasures,  and  the 
punishments  both  from  conscience  and 
divine  justice,  with  which  impunity, 
pride  and  presumptuous  inquiry  into 
the  awful  secrets  of  heaven  are  sure  to 
be  visited."  For  the  "Loves  of  the 
Angels,"  the  author  received  from  his 
publisher  seven  hundred  pounds.  The 
"  Memoirs  of  Captain  Rock,"  display- 
ing the  author's  views  and  feelings  on 
Irish  politics,  appeared  in  1824,  fol- 
lowed the  next  year  by  the  "  Life  of 
Sheridan,"  which,  as  we  have  seen,  had 
occupied  him  at  intervals  f  for  several 
years;  entertaining  as  a  whole:  a 
work  of  much  merit  in  a  literary  point 
of  view ;  discussing  with  ability  and 
discretion  matters  of  much  difficulty, 
presenting,  perhaps,  too  favorable  a 
view  of  his  hero's  character,  and  ex- 
hibiting too  dark  a  picture  of  the 
neglect  into  which  he  had  fallen  at 
the  last. 

Moore's  next  work,  "The  Epicu- 
rean," founded  on  the  Egyptian  stud- 
ies which  he  had  pursued  in  Paris 
with  many  advantages  and  much  dili- 
gence, with  the  assistance  of  Denon 
and  others,  was  originally  designed  to 
be  written  in  verse.  Its  first  concep- 
tion, subsequently  somewhat  modified, 
is  related  in  a  passage  of  the  poet's 
journal,  dated  July  25th,  1820. — 
"  Began  my  Egyptian  poem,  and  wrote 
about  thirteen  or  fourteen  lines  of  it. 
The  story  to  be  told  in  letters  from  a 
young  Epicurean  philosopher,  who,  in 
the  second  century  of  the  Christian 
era,  goes  to  Egypt  for  the  purpose  of 


THOMAS  MOOEE. 


603 


discovering  the  elixir  of  immortality, 
which  is  supposed  to  be  one  of  the 
secrets  of  the  Egyptian  priests.  Dur- 
ing the  Festival  on  the  Nile,  he  meets 
with  a  beautiful  maiden,  the  daughter 
of  one  of  the  priests  lately  dead.  She 
enters  the  catacombs,  and  disappears., 
He  hovers  around  the  spot,  and  at  last 
finds  the  well  and  secret  passages,  etc., 
by  which  those  who  are  initiated  enter. 
He  sees  this  maiden  in  one  of  those 
theatrical  spectacles  which  formed  a 
part  of  the  subterranean  Elysium  of 
the  Pyramids — finds,  opportunities  of 
conversing  with  her — their  intercourse 
in  this  mysterious  region  described. 
They  are  discovered,  and  he  is  thrown 
into  those  subterranean  prisons,  where 
they  who  violate  the  rules  of  Initiation 
are  confined.  He  is  liberated  from 
thence  by  the  young  maiden,  and,  tak- 
ing flight  together,  they  reach  some 
beautiful  region,  where  they  linger,  for 
a  time,  delighted,  and  she  is  near  be- 
coming a  victim  to  his  arts ;  but,  taking 
alarm,  she  flies  and  seeks  refuge  with 
a  Christian  monk,  in  the  Thebaid,  to 
whom  her  mother,  who  was  secretly  a 
Christian,  had  consigned  her  in  dying. 
The  struggles  of  her  love  with  her 
religion.  A  persecution  of  the  Chris- 
tians takes  place,  and  she  is  seized 
(chiefly  through  the  unintentional 
means  of  her  lover)  and  suffers* martyr- 
dom. The  scene  of  her  martyrdom 
described  in  a  letter  from  the  Solitary 
of  the  Thebaid,  and  the  attempt  made 
by  the  young  philosopher  to  rescue 
her.  He  is  carried  off  from  thence  to 
the  cell  of  the  Solitary.  His  letters 
from  that  retreat,  after  he  has  become 
a  Christian,  devoting  his  thoughts  en- 
tirely to  repentance  and  the  recollec- 


tion of  the  beloved  saint  who  had 
gone  before  him. — If  I  don't  make 
something  out  of  all  this,  the  deuce  is 
in't." 

According  to  this  plan,  as  the  au- 
thor further  informs  us  in  his  preface 
to  the  work,  the  events  of  the  story 
were  to  be  told  in  Letters  or  Episto- 
lary Poems,  addressed  by  the  philoso- 
pher to  a  young  Athenian  friend ;  but, 
for  greater  variety,  as  \>v  ell  as  conven- 
ience, he  afterwards  distributed  the 
task  of  narration  among  the  chief  per- 
sonages of  the  tale.  The  great  diffi- 
culty, however,  of  managing  in  rhyme 
the  minor  details  of  a  story,  so  as  to  be 
clear  without  growing  prosaic,  and 
still  more,  the  diffuse  length  to  which 
he  saw  narration  in  verse  would  ex- 
tend, deterred  him  from  following  this 
plan  any  further;  and  he  then  com- 
menced the  tale  anew  in  its  present 
prose  shape.  Of  the  poems  written 
for  the  first  experiment,  a  few  speci- 
mens were  introduced  into  the  prose 
story.  The  remainder  were  thrown 
aside  and  remained  neglected  for  many 
years  after,  till  the  author's  friend,  Mr. 
Macrone,  the  London  publisher,  calling 
upon  him  for  some  new  poem  or  story, 
to  be  illustrated  by  Turner  the  artist ; 
unable  to  gratify  this  wish,  it  was  pro- 
posed to  publish  such  an  illustrated 
edition  of  the  "  Epicurean,"  the  copy- 
right of  which  was  still  in  the  hands 
of  the  author.  To  add  to  the  bulk  of 
the  work,  which  was  hardly  sufficient 
for  the  publisher's  purpose,  Moore  re- 
vived the  original  poems,  and  issued 
them  with  the  tale,  with  the  title, 
"  Alciphron."  The  whole  thus  ap- 
peared with  four  brilliant  designs  by 
Turner  in  1839.  In  his  preface  to  this 


604 


THOMAS  MOORE. 


work,  the  author  says :  "  In  the  letters 
of  Alciphron  will  be  found,  heighten- 
ed only  by  a  freer  use  of  poetic  color- 
ing, nearly  the  same  detail  of  events, 
feelings  and  scenery  which  occupy  the 
earlier  part  of  the  prose  narrative ;  but 
the  letter  of  the  hypocritical  high 
priest,  whatever  else  its  claim  to  at- 
tention, will  be  found,  both  in  matter 
and  form,  new  to  the  reader."  Several 
separate  publications,  "  Odes  on  Cash, 
Corn,  Catholics,  etc.,"  1829;  "Even- 
ings  in  Greece,"  the  same  year ;  "  The 
Snmmer  Fete,"  1832  ;  "  The  Fudges  in 
England,"  a  sequel  to  "The  Fudge 
Family  in  Paris,"  severally  partaking 
of  the  characteristics  of  Moore's  previ- 
ous volumes,  with  a  large  number  of 
minor  poems,  satirical  or  sentimental, 
complete  the  series  of  his  poetcal 
works. 

In  1830  appeared  Ijis  best-known 
biographical  work,  the  "Letters  and 
Journals  of  Lord  Byron,  with  Notices 
of  his  Life."  For  this  work,  he  re- 
ceived from  Murray  four  thousand 
guineas.  It  is  essentially  composed  of 
the  letters  of  Byron,  very  many  of 
them  being  addressed  to  the  editor, 
Moore  having  been  for  a  long  period 
Byron's  constant  correspondent;  its 
interest,  therefore,  lies  mainly  in  the 
writings  of  Byron  himself.  This  re- 
lieved the  author  from  what  would  at 
the  time  have  been  a  most  inconven- 
ient, if  not  impracticable  task,  the  con- 
struction of  a  perfect  biography.  In- 
deed, after  all  the  attempts,  such  a 
work  yet  remains  to  be  written.  But 
Moore  had  a  large  stock  of  novel  ma- 
terials to  communicate  to  the  public, 
and  his  book  was  consequently  seized 
upon  with  avidity. 


There  remains  to  be  mentioned,  to 
complete  the  list  of  Moore's  publica 
tions,  another  biographical  work,  "  The 
Life  and  Death  of  Lord  Edward  Fitz- 
gerald," a  narrative  of  the  Irish  Kebel 
lion ;  "  Travels  of  an  Irish  gentleman 
in  search  of  a  Religion,"  a  learned  de- 
fence of  Roman  Catholicism;  and  a 
"  History  of  Ireland,"  written  for 
Lardner's  "  Cabinet  Cyclopaedia ;" 
which  appeared  in  1835.  "  Alciphron," 
the  poem  already  spoken  of,  was  his 
latest  work  in  1839.  In  1835,  under 
the  administration  of  Lord  Melbourne, 
a  pension  of  three  hundred  pounds  a 
year  was  granted  him  by  the  Queen. 

The  last  years  of  Moore's  life  were 
clouded  by  loss  of  memory  and  utter 
helplessness.  His  published  "  Diary  " 
closes  with  an  entry  in  May,  1847. 
He  was  then  alone  in  the  world  with 
his  wife,  the  sole  survivor  of  his  family, 
His  father  died  in  1825  ;  his  mother  in 
1832;  not  one  survived  of  his  five 
children.  "  Yet,"  says  his  biographer, 
Earl  Russell,  "  he  preserved  his  inter- 
est about  his  friends  ;  and  when  I  saw 
him  for  the  last  time,  on  the  20th  of 
December,  1849,  he  spoke  rationally, 
agreeably  and  kindly  on  all  those  sub- 
jects which  were  the  topics  of  our  con- 
versation. But  the  death  of  his  sister 
Ellen,  and  of  his  two  sons,  seem  to 
have  saddened  his  heart  and  in  his  last 
years  obscured  his  intellect. 

Moore,  having  nearly  completed  his 
seventy -third  year,  expired  calmly  and 
without  pain  on  the  26th  of  February, 
1852.  His  wife  survived  this  event 
thirteen  years.  Both,  with  three  of 
their  children,  lie  buried  in  the  church- 
yard of  Bromham,  in  the  vicinity  of 
the  poet's  cottage. 


/'/ •/•/«  tfie  onqmal  painliruMy  Chappel  in  the  possession  of  the  pablisJiers . 
JoiririOTL"v'.TiGon  &  Co., Publishers,  New^Srk. 


v'NIYERSJTY 
or 


LYDIA  HUNTLEY  SIGOUKNEY. 


607 


out  austerity,  leaving  upon  her  charac- 
ter the  permanent  mark  of  a  natural 
unaffected  piety,  true  to  its  convic- 
tions and  spontaneous  in  the  expres- 
sion of  them,  simply  because  they 
were  natural  and  an  inseparable  por- 
tion of  her  life.  Her  tastes  and  habits 
all  tended  to  simplicity ;  and  good 
health  of  body  and  soul  led  to  con- 
tentment. She  had  an  excellent  guide 
to  her  first  studies,  in  her  venerable 
friend,  Madame  Lathrop,  who  surviv- 
ed through  her  period  of  girlhood,  a 
genuine  lady  of  the  old  school,  amiable 
and  dignified,  and  familiar  with  the 
English  literature  of  her  day.  As  she 
grew  up,  a  succession  of  competent 
teachers  introduced  her  to  various 
branches  of  knowledge.  Reading,  as 
we  have  seen,  at  three  years  old,  she 
became  such  a  proficient,  that  at  the 
age  of  eight,  she  actually  planned  and 
commenced  a  novel  in  the  epistolary 
style,  with  the  scene  partly  laid  in 
Italy — a  thing  of  the  least  conse- 
quence, of  course,  if  it  had  been  finish- 
ed, but  noticable  enough  in  connextion 
with  her  after-literary  career.  Among 
her  instructors,  was  one  of  that  unfail- 
ing supply  in  America  in  those  days 
from  Trinity  College,  Dublin.  This 
Irish  preceptor  was  strong  in  mathe- 
matics, and  imbued  his  pupil  with  a 
love  of  the  science,  so  that  she  became 
enthusiastic  in  the  study,  and  was  al- 
ways thankful  for  it  as  a  valuable  dis- 
cipline of  her  powers.  Yale  College 
furnished  another  beneficent  teacher 
in  Pelatiah  Perrit,  who  taught  the 
Greek  and  Latin  classics  to  a  select 
class  of  twenty-five,  and  who  after- 
wards became  distinguished  as  a  mer- 
chant and  philanthropist  in  New  York. 


She  afterwards  learnt  history  and 
mental  philosophy,  and  took  so  kind 
ly  to  Latin  as  to  employ  herself  in 
translations  from  the  ^Eneid.  French, 
and  even  a  considerable  knowledge  of 
Hebrew,  were  added  to  her  early  ac- 
complishments, as  she  entered  with 
the  full  ardor  of  her  imagination  into 
the  story  of  Jonah,  the  lyrical  beauty 
of  which  she  expressed  in  a  happy 
rhythmical  translation.  And  all  this 
was  accomplished  at  the  age  of  four- 
teen. 

There  is  quite  a  remarkably  diary 
of  her  composition,  preserved  in  the 
"  Letters  "  which  she  wrote  at  this  time, 
giving  an  account  of  a  little  journey 
to  Hartford.  The  occasion  of  this 
jaunt  is  noticeable  for  its  indication 
of  the  girl's  susceptible  nature.  The 
death  of  her  venerable  "  benefactress," 
as  she  always  loved  to  call  Mrs.  Lath- 
rop, so  preyed  upon  her  spirits  as  se- 
riously to  affect  her  health.  Though 
her  friend  had  departed  full  of  years, 
at  the  age  of  eighty-eight,  and  had,  of 
course,  for  some  time  required  much 
anxious  attention,  the  kind  Lydia  had 
never  felt  the  burden,  but  had  cheer- 
fully humored  her  ways  and  smoothed 
the  pillow  of  declining  life.  "  I  could 
not  understand,"  she  writes,  "  why  any 
should  say  that  patience  was  tried  by 
the  mind's  brokenness.  To  me  it  was 
a  fresh  delight  to  tell  her  the  same 
thing  many  times,  if  she  required  it. 
Sometimes,  when  restlessness  oppressed 
her,  she  called  me  to  come  within  her 
curtains,  and  sing  the  simple  melodies 
that  she  had  early  taught  me.  This  I 
did  in  low,  soothing  tones,  joining  my 
cheek  to  hers,  when  she  was  com- 
forted, and  slept,  holding  often  my 


608 


LYDIA  HUNTLEY  SIGOUKKEY. 


hand  long  in  her  own."  Lydia  was 
with  her  when  she  died,  and  felt  her 
loss  like  that  of  a  mother.  Seeing  her 
health  so  visibly  affected  after  this 
event,  her  parents  called  in  a  physi- 
cian, Dr.  Philemon  Tracy,  a  man  in 
advance  of  his  time,  for  he  had  more 
faith  in  studying  the  constitution  of 
his  patients  and  putting  them  under 
conditions  where  nature  might  exert 
her  powers  to  the  best  advantage  for 
recovery,  than  in  any  administration 
of  drugs.  For  the  cure  of  the  child 
torn  with  spasms,  he  simply  recom- 
mended that  she  should  be  clothed  in 
soft  red  flannel,  and  sent  on  a  visit  to 
Mrs.  Lathrop's  relations  in  Hartford. 
The  cure  was  perfect,  the  novelty  and 
interest  of  the  scene  to  which  she  was 
introduced,  and  the  kindness  of  her 
friends,  in  a  fortnight  fully  brought 
about  her  recovery.  The  family  by 
which  she  was  received,  was  that  of 
the  Wadsworths,  who  concentrated 
within  their  circle  the  best  qualities 
and  resources  of  that  high-minded, 
truly  hospitable  period.  Colonel  Jer- 
emiah Wadsworth,  the  nephew  of  Mrs. 
Lathrop,  was  no  longer  living,  but  his 
widow,  with  two  of  his  sisters,  lived  in 
the  family  mansion,  and  in  their  con- 
versation vividly  brought  before  their 
young  guest  the  recent  glories  of  the 
house,  when  it  had  been  visited  by 
Washington  and  other  notables  of  the 
Revolution,  Lafayette,  De  Grasse,  Roch- 
embeau,  Greene,  Putnam,  and  the  rest, 
with  the  wily  Talleyrand  in  exile. 
Under  such  influences,  Hartford,  past 
and  present,  was  thoroughly  learnt 
and  understood  by  the  youthful 
visitor.  A  year  or  two  before,  she 
had  begun  a  journal;  and  she  had 


now  much  to  her  that  was  memorable 
to  record  in  it.  We  can  hardly  real- 
ize, while  reading  the  portions  of  it  in 
the  "Letters,"  that  it  was  written 
by  a  girl  of  fourteen — for  it  is  as  well 
penned  and  with  much  the  same  talent 
at  description,  as  that  subsequently  giv- 
en to  the  world  in  the  New  England 
Travels  by  the  great  President  Dwight 
himself.  But  Mrs.  Sigourney  appears 
always  to  have  had  an  old  head  on 
young  shoulders.  So  she  describes 
places  and  scenes  with  fidelity  and 
unaffected  admiration ;  and,  not  con- 
tent with  excellent  prose,  runs  over  in 
very  creditable  blank  verse,  in  apos- 
trophes to  the  great  historic  shrine  of 
the  place,  the  venerable  Charter-Oak. 
This  was  written  in  the  autumn  of 
1805.  Fifty  years  afterwards,  when 
the  tree  was  prostrated  in  a  storm,  she 
wrote  a  dirge  in  commemoration  of 
its  fall. 

Returning  with  restored  health  to 
Norwich,  she  finds  her  parents  about 
to  remove  from  the  old  Lathrop  man- 
sion, to  a  neighboring  home  of  their 
own,  a  farm-house  with  a  spacious  gar- 
den, and  appointments,  which  had  been 
to  her  so  great  a  delight  in  childhood. 
She  entered  heartily  into  the  new  life, 
sharing  its  burdens  of  industry  and 
economy  cheerfully ;  for  the  family 
lived  in  a  greatly  independent  way, 
much  helping  themselves.  The  daugh 
ter  and  only  child  Lydia,  was  wel] 
qualified  to  assist  wherever  her  ser- 
vices might  be  required.  The  litera- 
ture and  love  of  poetry  which  she  had 
acquired,  were  not  at  the  expense  of 
humbler  accomplishments.  Expert 
with  the  needle,  from  the  age  of 
eight,  as  she  tells  us,  "I  had  been 


LYDIA  HUOTLEY  SIGOURNEY. 


609 


promoted  to  the  office  of  shirt-maker 
for  my  father.  I  now  adventured  up- 
on his  vests,  cutting  to  pieces  an  old 
one  as  a  pattern.  For  a  hall  in  the 
second  story,  which  was  carpetless,  I 
cut  squares  of  flannel,  about  the  size 
of  the  compartments  in  a  marble  pave- 
ment, and  sewed  on  each  a  pattern  of 
flowers  and  leaves  cut  from  broad- 
cloth, of  appropriate  colors.  The  effect 
of  the  whole  was  that  of  rich,  raised 
embroidery.  With  the  true  New  Eng- 
land spirit  of  turning  fragments  to 
good  account,  I  constructed  of  the 
pieces  which  were  too  small  for  the 
carpet,  a  gay  counterpane  for  a  little 
bed,  used  when  we  had  children 
among  our  nightly  guests.  I  also 
braided  white  chip,  and  fine  split- 
straw,  for  the  large  and  very  pretty 
hats  which  were  then  in  voo;ue."  The 

O 

industrious  Lydia  also  furnished  her 
father  with  stockings  of  her  own  knit- 
ting, an  exclusive  privilege  of  her  own; 
and,  with  the  aid  of  a  tenant  weaver 
on  the  premises,  spun  for  him  an  en- 
tire suit  of  clothes  of  the  choicest 
wool.  She  was  also  greatly  busied 
with  him  in  his  agricultural  and  horti- 
xiiltural  pursuits,  in  planting  and  cul- 
tivating. Industry  and  happiness  in 
cheerful  employment  ruled  the  hour 
in  the  Connecticut  homestead,  which, 
so  great  have  been  the  changes  and 
departures  from  it,  looking  back  upon 
it  now,  seems  hardly  a  possibility  of 
the  present  century.  There  were 
amusements,  too,  and  accomplish- 
ments, in  abundance.  With  a  due 
observance  of  the  Sabbath,  there  was 
no  Puritan  austerity  in  the  household 
to  exclude  dancing  and  the  innocent 
gaieties  of  social  intercourse.  Music 
77 


came  with  the  singing-school,  and  a 
soldierly  Frenchman  taught  dancing 
with  the  stiff  graces  and  inflexible 
exactness  of  a  military  drill-sergeant. 
Among  other  acquisitions  in  this 
youthful  period,  were  a  great  deal  of 
painting  and  drawing,  of  which  lit- 
tle came,  while  a  great  good  resulted 
from  acquaintance  with  books,  and 
especially  the  poets.  There  was  one 
excellent  practice,  in  the  pursuit  of 
literature,  well  worthy  of  revival 
at  any  time.  "Committing  passages 
from  the  poets  to  memory  was  a  sys- 
tematic exercise.  Cowper  and  Gold- 
smith were  among  the  first  chosen  for 
that  purpose.  The  melody  of  the  lat- 
ter won  both  the  ear  and  heart ;  and 
1  The  Deserted  Village,'  or  <  The  Travel- 
ler,' were  voicelessly  repeated,  after 
retiring  at  night,  if  sleep, 

'Like  parting  summer's  lingering  bloom  de- 
lay'd.' 

With  the  earnest  perusal  of  Shakes- 
peare and  Thomson,  was  interspersed 
that  of  the  German  poets,  Klopstock 
and  Kotzebue,  and  also  some  of  the 
modern  travelers  and  ancient  histon 
ans.  Among  the  latter  was  Josephus, 
whose  study  did  not,  on  the  whole 
produce  any  great  satisfaction.  I  found 
myself  more  attracted  by  the  histori- 
ans of  the  Mother  Land,  still,  with  im- 
maturity of  taste,  prefering  the  con- 
ciseness of  Goldsmith  to  the  discursive 
and  classic  Hume.  A  reading  society 
of  a  few  young  people  was  commenced, 
and  sustained  with  various  fluctua- 
tions, where  the  prescribed  course  was 
the  history  of  our  own  country,  with  a 
garnish  of  the  poems  of  Walter  Scott. 
Attached  to  this  circle  were  some  fine 


510 


LYDIA  HTINTLEY   SIGOURNEY. 


readers,  among  whom  I  recollect,  with 
unalloyed  pleasure,  the  perfect  enunci- 
ation and  emphasis  of  a  lady,  who 
afterwards,  as  the  wife  of  the  Rev. 
Samuel  Nott,  went  out  with  our  first, 
band  of  missionaries  to  Asia." 

But  we  must  not  linger  over  pass- 
ages like  these,  though  nothing  can 
give  so  true  and  vivid  an  impression 
of  the  author's  life ;  of  those  mental 
habits  and  training,  and  those  cheerful 
virtues  which  have  rendered  the  auth- 
oress the  delight  of  all  who  knew  her 
or  her  writings.  It  is  another  very 
noticeable  thing  in  her  early  career, 
that  this  young  lady  was  inspired 
from  her  very  childhood  with  a  love  of 
teaching,  usually  rather  a  repulsive 
idea  to  juvenile  people.  In  her  earli- 
est years,  she  tells  us,  "  the  doll-genus 
were  not  at  all  essential  to  my  happi- 
ness. They  were  of  the  most  conse- 
quence when,  marshalled  in  the  char- 
acter of  pupils,  I  installed  myself  as 
their  teacher"  As  she  grew  older,  she 
pursued  the  idea  with  a  passionate  at- 
tachment. When  she  was  about  the 
age  of  eighteen,  she  seriously  set  about 
its  accomplishment.  "  My  father/' 
says  she,  "marvelled  at  my  prefer- 
ence, but  not  more  than  I  at  his  pro- 
posal to  fit  up  one  of  our  pleasantest 
apartments  for  my  chosen  purpose. 
With  what  exultation  I  welcomed  a 
long  desk  and  benches,  neatly 


new 


made  of  fair,  white  wood !  To  these 
I  proceeded  to  add  an  hour-glass,  and 
a  few  other  articles  of  convenience 
and  adornment.  My  active  imagina- 
tion peopled  the  room  with  attentive 
scholars,  and  I  meditated  the  opening 
address,  which,  I  trusted,  would  win 
their  hearts,  and  the  rules  which  were 


to   regulate  their  conduct.     Without 

O 

delay  I  set  forth  to  obtain  those  per 
sonages,  bearing  a  prospectus,  very 
beautifully  written,  of  an  extensive 
course  of  English  studies,  with  in- 
struction in  needlework.  My  slight 
knowledge  of  the  world  induced  me 
to  offer  it  courageously  to  ladies  in 
their  parlors,  or  fathers  in  their  stores, 
who  had  daughters  of  an  age  adapted 
to  my  course.  I  did  not  anticipate 
the  difficulty  of  one,  at  so  early  an 
age,  suddenly  installing  herself  in  a 
position  of  that  nature,  especially 
among  her  own  people.  Day  after 
day  I  returned  from  my  walk  of  so- 
licitation without  a  name  on  my  cata- 
logue. Yet  with  every  morning  came 
fresh  zeal  to  persevere.  At  length, 
wearied  with  fruitless  pedestrian  ex- 
cursions, and  still  more  depressing 
refusals,  I  opened  my  school  with  two 
sweet  little  girls  of  eleven  and  nine 
years  old.  Consolatory  was  it  to  my 
chastened  vanity  that  they  were  of  the 
highest  and  most  wealthy  families 
among  us.  Cousins  were  they,  both 
bearing  the  aristocratic  name  of  La- 
throp.  Very  happy  was  I  with  these 
plastic  and  lovely  beings.  Six  hours 
of  five  days  in  the  week,  besides  three 
on  Saturday,  did  I  sedulously  devote 
to  them,  questioning,  simplifying,  il- 
lustrating, and  impressing  various  de 
partments  of  knowledge,  as  though  a 
larger  class  were  auditors.  A  young 
lady  from  Massachusetts,  of  the  name 
of  Bliss,  being  in  town  for  a  short 
time,  also  joined  us  during  that  inter- 
val, to  pursue  drawing,  and  painting 
in  water-colors.  At  the  close  of  OUT 
term,  or  quarter,  as  it  was  then  called, 
was  aii  elaborate  examination  in  al] 


LYDIA   HU-STL3Y 


fill 


the  studies,  with  which  the  invited 
guests  signified  their  entire  approba- 
tion." 

There  was  nothing  very  profitable 
in  all  this,  though  the  forms  were  com- 
plied with  in  so  exemplary  a  manner. 
Not  discouraged,  however,  Miss  Hunt- 
ly  was  prepared  to  make  another  at- 
tempt. It  was  deliberately  planned, 
for  she  associated  with  herself  a  favor- 
ite companion  of  a  like  way  of  think- 
ing, her  friend,  Miss  Nancy  Maria 
Hyde,  who  also  wished  to  render  some 
assistance  to  her  father,  who  had  suf- 
fered a  reverse  of  fortune;  and  the 
two  proceeded  together  to  enter  a 
seminary  at  Hartford,  where  they 
might  gain  instruction  in  some  of  the 
ornamental  branches  of  female  educa- 
tion, as  drawing,  painting  in  water- 
colors,  embroidery,  and  the  like.  The 
design  was  carried  out,  and  on  their 
return,  after  a  short  absence,  they 
opened  together  a  school  at  Norwich, 
which  was  successful  from  the  start — 
so  much  was  accomplished  by  the 
prestige  of  a  little  foreign  education. 
Being  six  months  the  older  of  the 
two,  the  responsibility  of  opening  the 
school  with  prayer,  which,  though 
something  unusual  in  those  days,  had 
been  planned  by  Miss  Huntley,  de- 
volved upon  her. 

The  school  was,  in  its  way,  a  model 
one,  extensive  in  its  course  of  study, 
and  thorough,  with  especial  attention 
to  a  good  handwriting.  Those  who 
have  seen  specimens  of  Mrs.  Sigour- 
ney's  manuscript,  will  remember  its 
distinctness  and  regularity — an  index 
of  her  mind  and  character.  There  was 
also  good  attention  to  useful  needle- 
work— a  very  important  thing,  too, 


ministering  equally  to  the  usefulness 
and  happiness  of  those  who  are  skil- 
ful in  it.  Soon  the  school  so  grew  in 
numbers,  that  larger  accommodations 
were  required  for  it,  and  a  new  build- 
ing was  taken.  This  prospered  also ; 
but  teaching  was  but  slightly  remun- 
erated in  those  days,  the  price  for  the 
quarter's  tuition  being  but  three  dol- 
lars, so  that  there  could  be  no  great 
pecuniary  gain.  A  better  prospect, 
however,  was  opened  on  a  visit  of 
Miss  Huntley  to  Hartford,  when  Mr. 
Daniel  Wadsworth  proposed  that,  re- 
siding in  the  family  mansion,  she 
should  take  charge  of  a  select  num- 
ber of  young  ladies,  the  children  of 
his  friends.  She  accepted  the  offer; 
the  new  home;  so  rich  and  liberal  in 
all  goodness  and  advantages,  was  en- 
tered, and  the  school  was  opened,  and 
continued  there  for  five  years.  The 
conclusion  of  this  period  brought  her 
to  the  age  of  twenty-eight,  when  an 
entire  change  in  her  life  occurred,  con- 
sequent upon  her  marriage  to  Mr. 
Charles  Sigourney,  a  highly  educated 
and  accomplished  gentleman  of  min- 
gled Huguenot  and  Scottish  descent, 
who  had  been  educated  in  England, 
and  brought  up  to  business  affairs, 
and  at  the  time  of  this  union  was 
established  in  Hartford,  a  wealthy 
hardware  merchant.  He  was  a  wid- 
ower, with  a  son  and  two  daughters, 
all  three  in  their  childhood.  Being 
attached  to  the  Protestant  Episcopal 
Church,  his  new  wife  joined  him  in 
attendance  upon  its  services,  and  be- 
came one  of  its  most  honored  mem- 
bers. They  resided  together  for  eigh- 
teen years,  at  a  beautiful  rural  resi- 
dence overlooking  Hartford,  which, 


612 


LYDIA  HUNTLEY  SIGOURNEY. 


owing  to  the  loss  of  property  by  her 
husband,  was  then  exchanged  for  a 
simpler  residence,  a  small  but  pic- 
turesque cottage  within  the  limits  of 
the  city,  where  Mrs.  Sigourney  passed 
the  remainder  of  her  life.  A  son  and 
daughter  were  born  to  her  in  her  first 
residence.  The  former  was  taken  from 
her  while  a  student  in  college,  at  the 
age  of  nineteen ;  and  about  four  years 
after,  his  father  followed  him  to  the 
grave  by  a  sudden  stroke  of  apoplexy, 
at  the  age  of  seventy-six.  The  daugh- 
ter was  married  the  year  after  to  the 
Rev.  F.  T.  Russell,  a  clergyman  of  the 
Episcopal  Church. 

Leaving  for  the  moment  these  no- 
tices of  her  more  purely  domestic  life, 
we  have  now  to  trace  her  public  liter- 
ary career.  This  began  in  her  twenty- 
fourth  year,  with  the  publication  in 
1815  of  a  volume  entitled  "Moral 
Pieces  in  Prose  and  Verse,"  a  collec- 
tion largely  reflecting  her  tastes  and 
habits  of  mind  as  a  teacher,  the  prose 
essays  being  introduced  with  the  ex- 
planation that  they  had  been  address- 
ed to  "  a  number  of  ladies  under  her 
care."  The  occasional  verses  exhibited 
facility  of  execution.  A  religious  tone 
pervaded  the  whole.  The  book  was 
prepared  at  the  suggestion  of  the 
writer's  kind  friend  and  patron,  Mr. 
Daniel  Wadsworth,  who  gathered  sub- 
scriptions for  it,  and  saw  it  fairly 
through  the  press.  It  was  well  re- 
ceived, and  gave  that  encouragement 
to  the  author  which  led  her  to  a  con- 
stant employment  of  her  talents  in 
literary  production.  The  death  of  her 
friend  and  fellow-teacher,  Miss  Hyde, 
the  following  year,  was  the  occasion 
of  her  next  appearance  before  the  pub- 


lic, with  a  biography  of  that  lady  pre 
fixed  to  a  selection  from  her  writings. 
Of  her  next  publication,  in  1819,  she 
gives  the  following  account.  "  TJie 
Square  Table,  was  the  first  literary 
production  after  my  marriage,  written 
by  snatches  while  I  was  becoming  ini 
tiated  into  the  science  of  housekeep- 
ing, with  the  shell  of  the  school-mis- 
tress still  on  my  head.  It  was  miscel- 
laneous, and  in  reply  to  "Arthur's 
Round  Table,"  a  somewhat  satirical 
work  which  had  recently  appeared. 
So  strict  was  its  incognita,  that  I  had 
great  amusement  in  hearing  its  merits 
discussed,  and  its  authority  inquired 
after  in  the  circles  where  I  visited.  It 
was  issued  in  pamphlet  form,  but  not 
long  continued,  as  I  found  the  mystery 
on  which  its  existence  depended  in 
danger  of  being  unravelled." 

In  1822  Mrs.  Sigourney  published  a 
poem  in  five  cantos,  entitled,  "Traits 
of  the  Aborigines  of  America,"  written 
before  her  marriage,  and  stimulated  by 
her  interest  in  a  Mohegan  tribe  of  In- 
dians, who  then  resided  but  a  few 
miles  from  her  home  at  Norwich.  This 
book,  she  tells  us,  "  was  singularly  un- 
popular ;  there  existing  in  the  commu- 
nity no  reciprocity  with  the  subject." 
With  her  characteristic  benevolence, 
Mrs.  Sigourney  was  always  inclined  to 
take  a  favorable  view  of  the  Indian 
character,  and  attribute  much  of  their 
misfortunes  to  the  injustice  which  they 
received  at  the  hands  of  the  govern- 
ment and  their  white  brethren.  Her 
imagination  was  attracted  to  their  old 
mode  of  living  in  their  ancient  occu 
pancy  of  the  country,  and  she  delight- 
ed to  trace  the  relics  of  their  history 
in  the  names  which  they  had  given  to 


LYDIA  HUNTLET  SIGOUKNEY. 


613 


many  natural  features  of  the  land. 
She  gave  expression  to  this  feeling  in 
one  of  the  most  admired  of  her  subse- 
quent poems. 

Ye  say  they  all  have  passed  away, 

That  noble  race  and  brave, 
That  their  light  canoes  have  vanished 

From  off  the  crested  wave ; 
That  mid  the  forests  where  they  roamed 

There  rings  no  hunter's  shout; 
But  their  name  is  on  your  waters, 

Ye  may  not  wash  it  out. 

Nearly  twenty  years  afterwards,  we 
find  Mrs.  Sigourney  returning  to  these 
themes,  in  her  poem  of  "  Pocahontas," 
stimulated  by  her  having  visited  the 
ruins  of  the  church  at  Jamestown, 
where  the  Indian  princess  received  the 
rite  of  baptism,  a  subject  commemora- 
ted in  some  of  her  best  lines,  as  she 
pictured  the  devotion  of  the  early 
settlers. 

In  1824  Mrs.  Sigourney  published  a 
volume  of  much  interest,  a  "  Sketch  of 
Connecticut,  Forty  Years  Since,"  a 
valuable  contribution  to  the  social 
history  of  the  preceding  age,  tracing 
primitive  habits  and  traditions,  with 
some  intermingling  of  fiction,  the 
scene  being  laid  among  the  wild  and 
beautiful  regions  of  her  native  place, 
and  the  object  of  its  construction 
being,  as  she  tells  us,  u  to  embalm  the 
memory  and  virtues  of  an  ancient  lady, 
my  first  and  most  loved  benefactress." 
This,  of  course,  was  Madame  Lathrop. 
"  It  was  meant,"  she  adds,  "  to  be  an 
offering  of  gratitude  to  her  whose  in- 
fluence, like  a  golden  thread,  had  run 
through  the  whole  woof  of  my  life. 
Her  relatives,  as  if  by  a  heritable 
affection,  continued  to  brighten  its 
course  and  coloring;  and,  through 
their  deeds  of  kindness,  she,  being 


dead,  yet  spake.  Truly  and  devoutly 
would  I  apostrophize  her,  whose  hal- 
lowed hand  wrought  among  the  ele 
ments  of  my  being 

'  If  some  faint  love  of  goodness  glow  in  me, 
Pure  spirit !  I  first  caught  that  flame  from  thee.' " 

The  poems  of  Mrs.  Sigourney,  of 
which  a  first  collection  appeared  in 
1829,  followed  by  numerous  others  in 
the  next  thirty  years,  may  be  generally 
classed  in  the  rank  of  occasional 
verses,  inspired  by  some  emotional 
feeling,  or  suggested,  as  was  frequent- 
ly the  case,  by  some  object  appealing 
to  her  sympathy  or  imagination  in  her 
travels.  Her  journeys  in  her  early 
married  life  were  frequent,  to  Virginia, 
through  New  York  to  Niagara, 
Canada,  into  Pennsylvania,  and  in 
summer  to  the  coast  scenery  of  the 
New  England  States.  Her  visits  to 
all  of  these  places  may  be  traced  in 
her  poems.  A  special  gathering  of 
her  compositions  of  this  kind  was 
made  by  her  in  1845,  in  the  volume  of 
mingled  poetry  and  prose  entitled 
"Scenes  in  My  Native  Land."  It 
begins  and  ends  with  Niagara,  a  theme 
which  has  thus  far  baifled  the  attempt? 
of  poets.  The  numerous  descriptions 
of  the  book  are  marked  by  their  sim- 
plicity and  fidelity.  There  is  no 
straining  for  effect ;  all  is  truthfully 
and  plainly  narrated  as  it  meets  her 
eye.  In  1840  she  took  a  more  extend 
ed  tour,  crossing  the  Atlantic  and 
visiting  many  interesting  scenes  in 
England,  Scotland  and  France.  Hex 
volume  entitled  "  Pleasant  Memories 
of  Pleasant  Lands,"  gives  an  account 
of  these  journeys,  in  which  her  faculty 
of  receiving  pleasure  from  every 


LYD1A  HUNTLEY   SIGOUKNEY. 


worthy  object  is,  as  in  all  her  writings, 
distinctly  noticeable. 

Another  class  of  Mrs.  Sigourney's 
writings  are  simply  moral  and  didac- 
tic prose  compositions,  of  a  religious 
bearing,  illustrating  the  lessons  of 
every-day  life,  somewhat  in  the  man- 
ner of  the  essays  of  Hannah  More,  as 

• 

the  "Letters  to  Young  Ladies,"  and  to 
"  Mothers,"  which  have  passed  through 
various  editions  from  the  press  of  the 
Messrs.  Harper ;  books  full  of  kindly, 
practical  suggestions ;  virtuous  with- 
out being  ascetic;  teaching  how  the 
dangers  and  disagreeable  incidents  of 
life  may  be  overcome ;  how  tastes  and 
tempers  may  be  regulated ;  the  soul 
instructed ;  time  gracefully  employed, 
and  life  be  made  more  honorable  and 
happy.  The  list  of  Mrs.  Sigourney's 
publications,  as  enumerated  by  her- 
self, reaches  no  less  than  fifty-six ;  some 
of  them  new  collections  of  previous 
writings ;  none  without  some  attrac- 
tive quality  or  benevolent  purpose. 
In  the  production  of  these  works  the 
life  of  the  amiable  author  seemed  to  be 
extended.  Living  quietly  at  her  home 
in  Hartford,  surrounded  by  affection- 
ate and  admiring  friends,  tributes 
came  to  her  from  the  English  reading 
public  in  Great  Britain  and  America, 
solacing  her  with  the  consolation  that 
her  life  had  not  been  spent  in  vain ; 
and  when  the  end  came,  after  more 
than  twenty  years  of  widowhood,  it 
found  her  ripe  in  fame  as  in  age.  The 
single  talent  given  her  was  well  em- 
ployed. Her  last  poem,  a  fragment 
entitled  "  The  Valedictory,"  a  portion 
of  a  projected  longer  work  to  be  called 


"  The  Septuagenarian  "  was  written  by 
her  less  than  four  weeks  before  her 
death.  It  is  very  characteristic  of  her 
cheerful,  beneficent,  untroubled  life. 

Here  is  my  Valedictory.     I  b:ing 
A  basket  of  dried  fruits — autumnal  leaves, 
And  mosses,  pressed  from  ocean's  sunless  tides. 
I  strew  them  votive  at  your  feet,  sweet  friends. 
Who've    listened   to    me  long — with   grateful 

thanks, 
For  favoring  smiles,  that  have  sustained  and 

cheered 
All  weariness. 

I  never  wrote  for  fame- 

The  payment  seemed  not  to  be  worth  the  toil  ; 
But  wheresoe'er  the  kind  affections  sought 
To  mix  themselves  by  mnsic  with  the  mind, 
That  was  my  inspiration  and  delignt. 

And    you,    for    many  a    lustrum,   have   not 

frowned 

Upon  my  lingering  strain.    Patient  you  've  been, 
Even  as  the  charity  that  never  fails ; 
And  pouring  o'er  my  heart  the  gentlest  tides 
Of  love  and  commendation.     So  I  take 
These  tender  memories  to  my  pillowed  turf, 
Blessing  you  for  them  when  I  breathe  no  more. 

Heaven's  peace  be  with  you  all ! 

Farewell  1  Farewell ' 

And  with  like  thoughts  of  peace  and 
good  will,  in  love  with  all  noble 
things  to  the  last,  soothed  by  the 
kindness  of  all  about  her,  still  think- 
ing how  she  might  do  good  to  others ; 
recalling  in  one  of  her  last  hours  a 
verse  from  her  own  earlv  translation 

• 

of  the  Hebrew  prophet  —  "In  the 
fainting  away  of  my  life,  I  will  think 
upon  Jehovah,  and  He  shall  send  forth 
strength  for  me  from  His  Holy  Tem- 
ple,"— consoled  by  the  ministers  of 
the  church  of  her  affections,  this  gentle 
lady  passed  away  from  earth,  at  her 
home  in  Hartford,  on  the  10th  of  June, 
1865. 


em,  ffit.  anginal  pam&ng  fy  Ctuiprpel 


Johnso 


ANDREW    JACKSON. 


A   NDKEW  JACKSON  was  of  Ir- 

-CX  ish  parentage.  His  father,  of 
the  same  name,  belonged  to  a  Protes- 
tant family  in  humble  life  which  had 
been  long  settled  at  Carrickfergus,  in 
the  north  of  Ireland,  whence  he  brought 
his  wife  and  two  children  to  America, 
in  1765.  They  were  landed  at  Charles- 
ton, South  Carolina,  and  proceeded  at 
once  to  the  upper  region  of  the  coun- 
try, on  the  Catawba,  known  as  the 
Waxhaw  settlement.  They  came  as 
poor  emigrants  to  share  the  labors  of 
their  friends  and  countrymen  who 
were  settled  in  the  district.  Andrew 
Jackson,  the  elder,  began  his  toilsome 
work  in  clearing  the  land  on  his  plot  at 
Twelve  Mile  Creek,  a  branch  of  the 
Catawba,  in  what  is  now  known  as 
Union  County,  North  Carolina,  but 
had  barely  established  himself  by  two 
years'  labor  when  he  died,  leaving  his 
widow  to  seek  a  refuge  with  her 
brother-in-law  in  the  neighborhood. 
A  few  days  after  her  husband's  death, 
on  the  15th  March,  1767,  she  brought 
forth  a  third  son,  Andrew,  of  whose  life 
we  are  about  to  give  an  account.  The 
father  having  left  little,  if  any,  means 
of  support  for  his  family,  the  mother 
found  a  permanent  home  with  another 


brother-in-law  named  Crawford, 
resided  on  a  farm  just  over  the 
border  in  South  Carolina.  There  the 
boyhood  of  Jackson  was  passed  in  the 
pursuits  incident  to  youth,  in  frontier 
agricultural  life.  His  physical  powers 
were  developed  by  healthy  sports  and 
exercise,  and  his  mind  received  some 
culture  in  the  humble  rudiments  of 
education  in  the  limited  schooling  of 
the  region.  It  is  probable  that  some- 
thing better  was  intended  for  him 
than  for  most  of  the  boys  in  his  posi- 
tion, since  we  hear  of  his  being  at  an 
Academy  at  Charlotte,  and  of  his  mo- 
ther's design  to  prepare  him  for  the 
calling  of  a  Presbyterian  clergyman. 
Such,  indeed,  might  well  have  been  his 
prospects,  for  he  had  a  nature  capable 
of  the  service,  had  not  the  war  of  the 
Revolution,  now  breaking  out  afresh 
in  the  South,  carried  him  in  quite  a 
different  direction. 

In  1779  came  the  invasion  of  Smith 
Carolina,  the  ruthless  expedition  of  Pro- 
vost along  the  seaboard  preceding  the 
arrival  of  Clinton,  and  the  fall  of 
Charleston.  The  latter  event  occurred 
in  May  of  the  following  year,  and 
Cornwallis  was  free  to  carry  out  his 
plan  for  the  subjugation  of  the  coun 

1615) 


616 


ANDEEW  JACKSON. 


try.  Sending  Tarleton  before  him, 
the  very  month  of  the  surrender  of 
the  city,  the  war  of  devastation  was 
carried  to  the  border  of  the  State,  the 
very  home  of  Jackson.  The  action  at 
the  Waxhaws  was  one  of  the  bloodiest 
in  a  series  of  bloody  campaigns,  which 
ended  with  only  the  final  termination 
of  hostilities.  It  was  a  massacre  rath- 
er than  a  battle,  as  American  blood 
was  poured  forth  like  water.  The 
mangled  bodies  of  the  wounded  were 
brought  into  the  church  of  the  settle- 
ment, where  the  mother  of  the  young 
Jackson,  then  a  boy  of  thirteen,  with 
himself  and  brother — he  had  but  one 
now,  Hugh  having  joined  the  patriots 
and  fallen  in  the  affair  at  Stono — at- 
tended the  sick  and  dying.  That 
"gory  bed"  of  war,  consecrated  by 
the  spot  where  his  father  had  wor- 
shipped, and  near  which  he  reposed 
in  lasting  sleep,  summoned  the  boy  to 
his  baptism  of  blood.  He  was  not 
the  one  to  shrink  from  the  encounter. 
We  accordingly  find  him  on  hand  at 
Sumter's  attack,  in  the  following  Au- 
gust, on  the  enemy's  post  at  Hanging 
Rock,  accompanying  Major  Davies' 
North  Carolina  troop  to  the  fight, 
though  he  does  not  appear  to  have  en- 
gaged in  the  battle.  A  few  days  after, 
Gates  was  defeated  at  Camden,  and 
Mrs.  Jackson  and  her  children  fled  be- 
fore the  storm  of  war  to  a  refuge  in  the 
northern  part  of  the  district.  The  es- 
cape was  but  temporary,  for,  on  her 
return  in  the  spring,  her  boys  were  en- 
tangled, as  they  could  not  well  fail 
to  be  in  that  region,  in  the  desultory, 
seldom  long  intermitted  partizan  war- 
fare which  afflicted  the  Carolinas.  In 
the  preparation  for  one  of  the  frequent 


skirmishes  between  Whig  and  Tory, 
the  two  brothers  were  surprised,  es- 
caped in  flight,  were  betrayed  and 
captured.  It  was  on  this  occasion 
that  the  scene,  often  narrated,  occur- 
red, of  the  indignity  offered  by  the 
British  officer,  met  by  the  spirited  re- 
sistance of  the  youth.  Andrew  was 
ordered  by  the  officer,  in  no  gentle  tone, 
to  clean  his  boots.  He  refused  per- 
emptorily, pleading  his  rights  as  a 
prisoner  of  war,  an  argument  which 
brought  down  a  rejoinder  in  a  sword- 
thrust  on  the  head  and  arm  raised  for 
protection,  the  marks  of  which  the  old 
hero  bore  to  his  last  day.  A  similar 
wound,  at  the  same  time,  for  a  like 
offence,  was  the  cause  of  his  brother's 
death.  Their  imprisonment  at  Camden 
was  most  cruel;  severely  wounded, 
without  medicine  or  care,  with  but 
little  food,  exposed  to  contagion,  they 
were  brought  forth  by  their  mother, 
who  followed  them  and  managed  their 
exchange.  Few  scenes  of  war  can  be 
fancied,  more  truly  heroic  and  pitiful 
than  the  picture  presented  by  Mr. 
Parton,  in  his  faithful  biography  of 
this  earnest,  afflicted,  patriotic  mother 
receiving  her  boys  from  the  dungeon, 
"astonished  and  horrified"  at  their 
worn,  wasted  appearance.  The  elder 
was  so  ill  as  not  to  be  able  to  sit  on 
horseback  without  help,  and  there 
was  no  place  for  them  in  those  troub- 
led times  but  their  distant  home.  It 
was  forty  miles  away.  Two  horses, 
with  difficulty  we  may  suppose,  were 
procured.  "  One  she  rode  herself. 
Robert  was  placed  on  the  other,  and 
held  in  his  seat  by  the  returning  pris- 
oners, to  whom  his  devoted  mother 
had  just  given  liberty.  Behind  the 


AKDRETV  JACKSON". 


617 


sad  procession,  poor  Andrew  dragged 
his  weak  and  weary  limbs,  bareheaded, 
barefooted,  without  a  jacket."  Before 
the  long  journey  was  thus  painfully 
accomplished,  "  a  chilly,  drenching, 
merciless  rain"  set  in,  to  add  to  its 
hardships.  Two  days  after,  Robert 
died,  and  Andrew  was,  happily,  per- 
haps, insensible  to  the  event  in  the  de- 
lirium of  the  small-pox,  which  he  had 
contracted  in  prison.  What  will  not 
woman  undertake  of  heroic  charity? 
This  mother  of  Andrew  Jackson  had 
no  sooner  seen  her  surviving  boy  re- 
covered by  her  care,  than  she  set  off 
with  two  other  matrons,  on  foot,  tra- 
versing the  long  distance  to  Charles- 
ton to  carry  aid  and  consolation  to 
her  nephews  and  friends  immured  in 
the  deadly  prison-ships  in  the  harbor. 
She  accomplished  her  errand,  but  died 
almost  in  its  execution,  falling  ill  of  the 
ship  fever  at  the  house  of  a  relative  in 
the  vicinity  of  the  city.  Thus  sank 
into  her  martyr's  grave,  this  woman, 
worthy  to  be  the  mother  of  a  hero, 
leaving  her  son  Andrew,  "  before 
reaching  his  fifteenth  birth-day,  an 
orphan ;  a  sick  and  sorrowful  orphan, 
a  homeless  and  dependent  orphan,  an 
orphan  of  the  Revolution." 

The  youth  remained  with  one  of  the 
Crawiords  till  a  quarrel  with  an 
American  commissary  in  the  house — 
this  lad  of  spirit  would  take  indignity 
neither  from  friend  or  foe — drove  him 
to  another  relative,  whose  son  being 
in  the  saddler's  trade,  led  him  to  some 
six  months'  engagement  in  this  mecha- 
nical pursuit.  This  was  followed  by  a 
somewhat  eager  enlistment  in  the  wild 
youthful  sports  or  dissipations  of  the 
day,  such  as  cockfighting,  racing  and 
78 


gambling,  which  might  have  wrecked 
a  less  resolute  victim ;  but  his  strength 
to  get  out  of  this  dangerous  current  was 
happily  superior  to  the  force  which  im- 
pelled him  into  it,  and  he  escaped.  He 
even  took  to  study  and  became  a  school- 
master, not  over  competent  in  some  re« 
spects,  but  fully  capable  of  imparting 
what  he  had  learnt  in  the  rude  old. 
field  schools  of  the  time.  We  doubt 
not  he  put  energy  into  the  vocables, 
as  the  row  of  urchins  stood  before  him, 
and  energy,  like  the  orator's  action,  is 
more  than  books  to  a  schoolmaster. 

A  year  or  two  spent  in  this  way, 
not  without  some  pecuniary  profit, 
put  him  on  the  track  of  the  law,  for 
which  there  is  always  an  opening  in 
the  business  arising  from  the  unset- 
tled land  titles  of  a  new  country,  to 
say  nothing  of  those  personal  strifes 
and  traditions  which  follow  man 
wherever  he  goes.  The  youth  —  he 
was  yet  hardly  eighteen — accordingly 
offered  himself  to  the  most  eminent 
counsel  in  the  region — that  is,  within 
a  hundred  miles  or  so — alighting  at 
the  law  office  of  Mr.  Spence  McCay,  a 
man  of  note  at  Salisbury,  North  Caro 
lina.  There  he  passed  1785  and  the 
following  year,  studying  probably 
more  than  he  has  credit  for,  his  repu- 
tation as  a  gay  young  fellow  of  the 
town  being  better  remembered,  as  is 
natural,  than  his  ordinary  office  rou- 
tine. He  had  also  the  legal  instruc- 
tions of  an  old  warrior  of  the  Revolu- 
tion, brave  Colonel  Stokes,  a  good 
lawyer  and  mixture  of  the  soldier  and 
civilian,  who  must  have  been  quite  to 
Andrew  Jackson's  taste.  Thus  forti- 
fied, with  the  moderate  amount  of 
learning  due  his  profession  in  those 


618 


AXDKEW   JACKSOJN. 


days,  he  was  licensed  and  began  the 
practice  >f  the  law. 

His  biographer,  Mr.  Parton,  pleased 
with  having  brought  him  thus  far  suc- 
cessfully on  the  stage  of  life,  stops  to 
contemplate  his  subject  at  full  length. 
His  points  may  be  thus  summed  up : 
"  A  tall  fellow,  six  feet  and  an  inch  in 
his  stockings ;  slender,  but  graceful ; 
far  from  handsome,  with  a  long,  thin, 
fair  face,  a  high  and  narrow  forehead, 
abundant  reddish-sandy  hair,  falling 
low  over  it — hair  not  yet  elevated  to 
the  bristling  aspect  of  later  days — 
eyes  of  a  deep  blue,  brilliant  when 
aroused,  a  bold  rider,  a  capital  shot." 

As  for  the  moral  qualities  which  he 
adds  to  these  physical  traits,  the  pru- 
dence associated  with  courage  and 
"that  omnipotent  something  which 
we  call  a  presence,"  which  faithful 
Kent  saw  in  his  old  discrowned  mon- 
arch Lear,  as  an  appeal  to  service  and 
named  "  authority," — it  is  time  enough 
to  make  these  reflections  when  the  man 
shall  have  proved  them  by  his  actions. 
He  will  have  opportunity  enough. 

After  getting  his  "  law,"  the  young 
advocate  took  a  turn  in  the  miscella- 
neous pursuits  of  the  West,  as  a  store- 
keeper at  Martinsville,  in  Guildford 
County,  keeping  up  his  connection 
with  his  profession,  it  is  reported,  by 
performing  the  executive  duties  of  a 
constable.  He  has  now  reached  the 
age  of  twenty-one,  when  he  may  be 
said  fairly  to  have  entered  upon  his 
career,  as  he  received  the  appointment 
of  solicitor  or  public  prosecutor  in  the 
western  district  of  North  Carolina,  the 
present  Tennessee.  This  carried  him 
to  Nashville,  then  a  perilous  journey 
through  an  unsettled  country,  filled  ' 


with  hostile  Indians.  He  arrived  at 
this  seat  of  his  future  home,  whence 
his  country  was  so  often  to  summon 
him  in  her  hour  of  need,  in  October, 
1788,  and  entered  at  once  vigorously 
on  the  practice  of  his  profession,  which 
was  very  much  an  off-hand,  extempore 
affair,  requiring  activity  and  resolution 
more  than  learning,  especially  in  the 
main  duties  of  his  office  as  collector  of 
debts.  A  large  extent  of  country  was 
to  be  traversed  in  his  circuits  of  the 
wilderness,  on  which  it  was  quite  as 
important  to  be  a  good  woodman  as  a 
well-informed  jurist.  Indeed,  there 
was  more  fear  of  the  Indian  than  of 
the  Opposite  Counsel.  Jackson  had 
the  confidence  of  the  mercantile  com- 
munity behind  him,  and  discharged 
his  duties  so  efficiently,  and  withal 
was  so  provident  of  the  future  which 
his  keen  eye  foresaw,  that  he  prosper- 
ed in  his  fortunes,  and  in  a  few  years 
became  a  considerable  landed  proprie- 
tor. 

In  1791  an  event  occurred  which 
became  subsequently  a  matter  of  fre- 
quent discussion,  and  which  certainly 
required  some  explanation.  Andrew 
Jackson  married  at  Natchez,  on  the 
Mississippi,  Mrs.  Robards,  at  the  time 
not  fully  divorced  from  her  husband, 
though  both  Jackson  and  the  lady  be- 
lieved the  divorce  had  been  pronounced. 
The  error,  after  the  sifting  which  the 
affair  received  when  it  became  a  ground 
of  party  attack,  and  the  blazing  light 
of  a  Presidential  canvass  was  thrown 
upon  it,  is  easily  accounted  for.  The 
cirum stances  of  the  case  may  be  thus 
briefly  narrated :  A  Colonel  Donel- 
son,  one  of  the  founders  of  Nashville, 
brought  with  him  to  that  settlement, 


ANDREW   JACKSON. 


019 


not  many  years  before,  his  daughter 
Rachel,  who,  at  the  time  of  Jackson's 
arrival,  was  married  to  a  Mr.  Robards, 
of  Kentucky.  The  young  "  solicitor  " 
found  the  pair  living  v/ith  the  lady's 
mother,  Mrs.  Donelson,  in  whose  house 
Jackson  became  an  inmate.  Robards 
appears  to  have  been  of  jealous  tem- 
perament, and  moreover  of  unsettled 
habits  of  living.  At  any  rate,  he  had 
his  home  apart  from  his  w~ife,  and  we 
presently  find  him,  in  the  second  win- 
ter after  Jackson's  arrival,  applying  as 
a  Kentuckian,  to  the  Virginia  legisla- 
ture, for  a  divorce.  He  procured  an 
order  for  the  preliminary  proceedings, 
which  were  understood,  or  rather  mis- 
understood by  the  people  of  Tennes- 
see, as  an  authoritative  separation. 
With  this  view  of  the  matter,  as  the 
explanation  is  given,  the  marriage 
took  place.  The  divorce  was  legally 
completed  in  1793.  When  Jackson 
then  learnt  the  true  state  of  the  case, 
he  had  the  marriage  ceremony  per- 
formed a  second  time.  During  the 
whole  of  the  affair  from  the  begin- 
ning, though  he  acted  as  a  friend  of 

<_>7  O 

the  lady,  he  appears  to  have  conduc- 
ted himself  toward  her  with  the  great- 
est propriety.  Indeed,  a  certain  innate 
sense  of  delicacy  and  pure  chivalrous 
feeling  toward  woman,  was  always  a 
distinctive  trait  of  his  character.  It 
was  constantly  noticed  by  those  most 
intimate  with  him,  as  a  remarkable 
characteristic,  in  a  man  roughly  tak- 
ing his  share  in  the  wild  pursuits  and 
dissipations  of  the  day.  He  was  no 
doubt  early  an  admirer  of  the  lady, 
whose  gay,  spirited  qualities  and  ad- 
venturous pioneer  life  were  likely  to 
fascinate  such  a  man,  and  made  no 


secret  of  his  contempt  for  the  husband, 
threatening  on  one  occasion,  when  he 
was  pestered  by  his  jealousies,  to  cut 
out  his  ears.  The  story  of  his  mar- 
riage was  of  course  variously  interpre- 
ted, but  he  allowed  no  doubtful  inti- 
mations of  the  matter  in  his  presence. 
It  was  a  duel  or  war  to  the  knife  when 
any  hesitation  on  that  subject  was 
brought  to  his  hearing. 

The  region  into  which  Jackson  had 
emigrated,  having  passed  through  its 
territorial  period,  when  the  solicitor 
became  atttorney-general,  reached  its 
majority  in  a  State  name  and  govern- 
ment of  its  own  in  1796.  He  was 
one  of  the  delegates  to  the  convention 
at  Knoxville,  which  formed  the  consti- 
tution of  Tennessee,  and  one  of  the  two 
members  of  each  county,  to  whom  was 
intrusted  the  drafting  of  that  instru 
ment.  When  the  State  was  admitted 
into  the  Union,  Andrew  Jackson  was 
chosen  its  first,  and,  at  that  time,  only 
representative  to  Congress.  He  took 
his  seat  at  the  beginning  of  the  session, 
at  the  close  of  the  year,  and  was  con- 
sequently present  to  receive  the  last 
opening  message  of  George  Washing- 
ton, it  being  usual  in  those  days  for 
the  President  to  meet  both  houses  to- 
gether at  the  commencement  of  their 
sitting,  and  deliver  his  speech  in  per- 
son — what  is  now  the  President's  mes- 
sage. In  like  manner,  according  to  the 
usage  of  the  English  Parliament,  a  re- 
ply was  prepared  and  voted  upon  by 
each  house,  which  was  carried  in  per 
son  by  the  members  to  the  President's 
mansion.  The  reply,  in  this  instance, 
proposed  in  the  House  of  Representa- 
tives by  the  Federalist  committee,  waa 
thought  too  full  an  indorsement  of  the 


820 


ANDREW  JACKSON. 


policy  of  the  administration,  and  met 
with  some  opposition  from  the  Repub- 
lican minority,  Andrew  Jackson  ap- 
pearing as  one  of  twelve,  by  the  side 
of  Edward  Livingston,  and  William  B. 
Giles,  of  Virginia,  voting  against  it. 
He  did  not  speak  on  the  question,  and 
his  vote  may  be  regarded  simply  as  an 
indication  of  his  party  sentiments, 
though,  had  he  been  an  ardent  admirer 
of  Washington,  he  might,  spite  of  his 
Tennessee  politics,  have  voted  with 
Gallatin  for  the  original  address.  That 
he  did  not,  does  not  imply  necessarily 
any  disaffection  to  Washington;  but 
there  was  probably  little  of  personal 
feeling  in  the  matter  to  be  looked  for 
from  him.  The  independent  life  of 
the  South  and  West  had  never  leaned, 
as  the  heart  of  the  Eastern  and  Atlan- 
tic regions,  upon  the  right  arm  of 
Washington.  The  only  question  upon 
which  he  spoke  during  the  session  was 
in  favor  of  assuming  certain  expenses 
incurred  in  an  Indian  expedition  in  his 
adopted  State;  and  the  resolution 
which  he  advocated  was  adopted.  His 
votes  are  recorded  in  favor  of  appro- 
priations for  the  navy,  and  against  the 
black  mail  paid  to  Algiers.  His  suc- 
cess in  the  Indian  bill  was  well  calcu- 
lated to  please  his  constituents,  and  he 
was  accordingly  returned  the  next 
year  to  the  Senate.  It  was  the  first 
session  of  the  new  administration,  and 
all  that  is  told  of  his  appearance  on  the 
floor  is  the  remark  of  Jefferson  in  his 
old  age  to  Daniel  Webster,  that  he 
had  often  seen  him,  from  his  Vice- 
President's  chair,  attempt  to  speak, 
and  "  as  often  choke  with  rage."  Mr. 
Parton  adds  to  this  recollection  the 
bare  fact  that  he  made  the  acquaint- 


ance of  Duane  of  the  "  Aurora,"  Aarou 
Burr  and  Edward  Livingston.  He  re 
tired  before  the  end  of  the  session,  and 
resigned  his  seat.  Private  affairs  call- 
ed him  home ;  but  he  could  not  have 
been  well  adapted  to  senatorial  life,  or 
he  did  not  like  the  position,  else  he 
would  have  managed  to  retain  it.  It 
was  an  honor  not  to  be  thrown  away 
lightly  by  an  ambitious  young  man. 

We  next  behold  him  chosen  by  the 
legislature  a  judge  of  the  Supreme 
Court  of  Tennessee — a  post,  one  would 
think,  of  severer  requisitions  than  that 
of  United  States  senator,  since  a  mem- 
ber of  a  legislative  body  may  give  a 
silent  vote  or  be  relieved  of  an  onerous 
committee,  while  the  occupant  of  the 
bench  is  continually  called  upon  to  ex- 
ercise the  best  faculties  of  the  mind. 
It  is  to  Jackson's  credit  that  he  held 
the  position  for  six  years,  during  which, 
as  population  flowed  into  the  State  and 
interests  became  more  involved,  the  re- 
quisitions of  the  office  must  have  been 
continually  becoming  more  exacting. 
Its  duties  carried  him  to  the  chief 
towns  of  the  State,  where  he  was  ex- 
posed to  the  observation  of  better  read 
lawyers  than  himself.  As  no  record 
was  kept  of  his  decisions,  we  have  to 
infer  the  manner  in  which  he  acquit- 
ted himself  from  what  we  know  his 
qualifications.  He  no  doubt  made 
himself  intelligible  enough  on  simple 
questions,  and  decided  courageously 
and  honestly  what  he  understood ; 
but  in  any  nice  matter  he  must  have 
been  at  fault  from  want  of  skill  in 
statement,  if  we  may  judge  of  his  tal 
ents  in  this  respect  by  his  printed  cor 
respondent,  which  is  ill  spelt,  ungram 
matical,  ana  confused. 


ANDREW   JACKSON. 


621 


His  personal  energy,  however,  doubt- 
less helped  him  on  occasion,  as  in  the 
famous  incident  of  his  arrest  of  Russell 
Bean.  This  strong  villain,  infuriated 
by  his  personal  wrongs,  was  at  war 
with  society,  and  bade  defiance  to  jus- 
tice. It  was  necessary  that  he  should 
be  brought  before  the  court  where 
Jackson  presided,  but  it  was  pro- 
nounced impossible  to  arrest  him. 
The  sheriff  and  his  posse  had  alike 
failed,  when  the  difficulty  was  solved 
by  the  most  extraordinary  edict  which 
ever  issued  from  the  bench.  "  Sum- 
mon me,"  said  the  judge  to  the  law 
officer.  It  was  done  and  the  arrest 
was  made.  It  is  curious  to  read  of  a 
judge  of  the  Supreme  Court  planning 
duels  and  rough  personal  encounter 
with  the  governor  of  the  State,  as  we 
do  of  Judge  Jackson  in  his  quarrel 
with  Governor  Sevier.  No  stronger 
evidence  could  be  afforded  of  the  im- 
perfect social  condition  of  the  country. 
It  was  a  rude,  unfinished  time,  when 
life  was  passed  in  a  fierce  personal 
contest  for  supremacy,  and  wrongs 
real  and  imaginary  were  righted  at 
sight  by  the  pistol.  This  period  of 
Jackson's  career,  including  the  ten 
years  following  the  retirement  from 
the  bench,  are  filled  with  prodigious 
strife  and  altercation.  The  dueling 
pistols  are  always  in  sight,  and  dreary 
are  the  details  of  wretched  personal 
quarrels  preliminary  to  their  use. 

The  first  of  these  encounters  in  which 
Jackson  Avas  a  principal,  occurred  as 
early  as  1795,  when  he  was  engaged 
in  court  and  challenged  the  opposite 
counsel  on  the  spot  for  some  scathing 
remark,  writing  his  message  on  the 
blink  leaf  of  a  law  book.  Shots  were 


exchanged  before  the  parties  slept. 
The  most  prominent  of  Jackson's  al- 
tercations, however,  was  his  duel  with 
Dickinson,  a  meeting  noted  among  nar- 
ratives of  its  class  for  the  equality  of 
the  combat,  and  the  fierce  hostility  of 
the  parties.  It  was  fought  in  180C,  on 
the  banks  of  Red  River  in  Kentucky. 
Charles  Dickinson  was  a  thriving  young 
lawyer  of  Nashville,  who  had  used  some 
invidious  expressions  regarding  Mrs. 
Jackson.  These  were  apologized  for 
and  overlooked,  when  a  roundabout 
quarrel  arose  out  of  the  terms  of  a 
horse  race,  which,  after  involving  Jack- 
son in  a  caning  of  one  of  the  parties, 
and  his  friend  Coffee  in  a  duel  with 
another,  ended  in  bringing  the  former 
in  direct  collision  with  Dickinson.  A 
duel  was  arranged.  The  principals 
were  to  be  twenty-four  feet  apart,  and 
take  their  time  to  fire  after  the  word 
was  given.  Both  were  excellent  shots, 
and  Dickinson,  in  particular,  was  sure 
of  his  man.  So  certain  was  Jackson  of 
being  struck,  that  he  made  up  his 
mind  to  let  his  antagonist  have  the 
first  fire,  a  deliberate  conclusion  of 
great  courage  and  resolution,  based 
on  a  very  nice  calculation.  He  knew 
that  his  antagonist  would  be  quicker 
than  himself  at  any  rate,  and  that  if 
they  fired  together  his  own  shot  would 

V  <-S 

probably  be  lost  in  consequence  of  the 
stroke  he  must  undoubtedly  receive 
from  the  coming  bullet.  He  conse- 
quently received  the  fire,  and  was  hit 
as  he  expected  to  be.  The  ball,  aimed 
at  his  heart,  broke  a  rib  and  grazed 
the  breast-bone.  His  shoes  were  filling 
with  blood  as  he  raised  his  pistol,  took 
deliberate  aim,  readjusted  the  trigger 
as  it  stopped  at  half  cock,  and  shot  hia 


622 


ANDREW   JACKSOK 


adversary  through  the  body.  Dickin- 
son fell,  to  bleed  to  death  in  a  long 
day  of  agony.  Jackson  desired  his 
own  wound  to  be  concealed,  that  his 
opponent  might  not  have  the  gratifica- 
tion of  knowing  that  he  had  hit  him. 
at  all.  Such  was  the  courage  and  such 
the  revenge  of  the  man. 

After  leaving  the  judgeship,  Jack- 
son— he  was  now  called  General  Jack- 
son, having  been  chosen  by  the  field 
officers  major-general  of  the  State  mili- 
tia in  1801,  gaining  the  distinction 
by  a  single  vote — employed  himself 
on  his  plantation,  the  Hermitage,  near 
Nashville,  and  the  storekeepiug  in 
which  he  had  been  more  or  less  engaged 
pince  his  arrival  in  the  country.  In 
partnership  with  his  relative,  Coffee, 
he  was  a  large  exchanger  of  the  goods 
of  the  West  for  the  native  produce, 
which  he  shipped  to  New  Orleans ; 
and  it  was  for  his  opportunities  of 
aiding  him  in  procuring  provisions,  as 
well  as  for  his  general  influence,  that 
Colonel  Burr  cultivated  his  acquaint- 
ance in  his  western  schemes  in  1805, 
and  the  following  year.  General  Jack- 
son, at  first  fascinated  by  the  man,  who 
stood  well  with  the  people  of  the 
country  as  a  republican,  introduced 
him  into  society  and  entertained  him 
at  his  house ;  but  when  suspicion  was 
excited  by  his  measures,  he  was  guard- 
ed in  his  intercourse,  and  stood  clearly 
forth  on  any  issue  which  might  arise, 
involving  the  preservation  of  the  in- 
tegrity of  the  Union.  On  that  point 
no  friendship  could  bribe  him.  Ac- 
cordingly he  offered  his  services  to 
President  Jefferson,  and  receiving  or- 
lers  to  hold  his  command  in  readiness, 
here  was  great  military  bustle  of  the 


major-general  in  Nashville,  raising  and 
reviewing  companies,  to  interrupt  the 
alarming  proceedings  of  Colonel  Burr 
on  the  Ohio.  When  it  was  found 
there  was  nothing  formidable  to  arrest, 
Jackson's  feeling  of  regard  for  Burr 
revived,  he  acquitted  him  of  any  trea- 
sonable intent,  and  resolutely  took  his 
part  during  the  trial  at  Richmond. 

On  the  breaking  out  of  the  war  with 
England,  in  1812,  General  Jackson  was 
one  of  the  first  to  tender  his  services  to 
the  President.  He  called  together 
twenty -five  hundred  volunteers  and 
placed  them  at  the  disposal  of  the 
Government.  The  proffer  was  accept- 
ed, and  in  December,  Jackson  was  set 
in  motion  at  the  head  of  two  thousand 
men  to  join  General  Wilkinson,  then 
in  command  at  New  Orleans.  The 
season  was  unusually  cold  and  incle- 
ment; but  the  troops,  the  best  men  of 
the  State,  came  together  with  alacrity, 
and  by  the  middle  of  February  were 
at  Natchez,  on  the  Mississippi.  Jack 
son's  friend  and  relative,  Colonel  Cof- 
fee, led  a  mounted  regiment  overland, 
while  the  rest  descended  the  river. 
Colonel  Thomas  H.  Benton  also  ap- 
pears on  the  scene  as  General  Jackson's 
aid.  At  Natchez,  the  party  was  ar- 
rested by  an  order  from  Wilkinson, 
and  remained  in  inaction  for  a  month, 
when  a  missive  came  from  the  War 
Department  disbanding  the  force. 
Thus  was  nipped  in  the  bud  the 
ardent  longing  of  the  general,  and  the 
promise  of  one  of  the  finest  bodies  of 
men  ever  raised  in  the  country.  Jack- 
son, taking  the  responsibility,  resolved 
that  they  should  not  be  dismissed  till, 
as  in  duty  bound,  he  had  returned  them 
home.  He  accordingly  led  them  back 


ANJDKEW  JACKSON. 


623 


by  land,  and  so  solicitous  was  he  for 
their  welfare  by  the  way,  so  jealous  of 
their  rights,  carelessly  invaded  by  the 
government,  that  his  popularity  with 
the  men  was  unbounded.  The  fiery 
duellist,  "  sudden  and  quick  in  quar- 
rel," gained  by  his  patient  kindness 
and  endurance  on  that  mareh,  the  en- 
dearing appellation,  destined  to  be  of 
world-wide  fame — "  Old  Hickory." 

He  had  taken,  as  we  have  said,  the 
responsibility  in  bringing  home  the 
troops.  This  involved  an  assumption 
of  their  debts  by  the  way,  for  it  was 
not  certain,  though  to  be  presumed, 
that  the  government  would  honor  his 
drafts  for  the  expenses  of  transporta- 
tion. It  did  not.  The  paper  was  pro- 
tested and  returned  upon  his  hands. 
In  this  strait,  Colonel  Benton,  going  to 
Washington,  undertook  the  manage- 
ment of  the  affair,  and  by  a  politic  ap- 
peal to  the  fears  of  the  administration, 
lest  it  should  lose  the  vote  of  the  State, 
secured  the  payment.  As  he  was  about 
returning  to  Nashville,  warmed  by  this 
act  of  friendship,  he  received  word 
from  his  brother  that  General  Jackson 
had  acted  as  second  in  a  duel  to  that 
brother's  adversary — a  most  ungracious 
act,  as  it  appeared,  at  a  moment  when 
the  claims  of  gratitude  should  have 
been  uppermost.  The  explanation  was 
that  Carroll,  who  received  the  challenge, 
was  unfairly  assailed,  and  appealed,  as  a 
friend,  to  the  generosity  of  Jackson  to 
protect  him.  Making  a  duel  very  much 
as  an  everyday  affair,  the  latter  proba- 
bly thought  little  of  the  absent  Benton. 
The  meeting  came  off,  and  Jesse  Ben- 
ton  was  wounded.  An  angry  .letter 
was  written  to  Jackson  by  his  brother, 
who  came  on  to  Nashville,  venting  his 


wrath  in  the  most  denunciatory  terms 
— for  Benton's  vocabulary  of  abuse, 
though  not  more  condensed,  was  more 
richly  furnished  with  expletives  than 
that  of  his  general.  This  coming  to 
the  hearing  of  Jackson,  he  swore  his 
big  oath,  "  by  the  Eternal,  that  he 
would  horsewhip  Tom  Benton  the  first 
time  he  met  him."  The  Bentons  knew 
the  man,  did  not  despise  the  threat,  but 
waited  armed  for  the  onset.  It  came 
off  one  day  at  the  door  of  the  City  Ho- 
tel in  Nashville.  There  were  several 
persons  actors  and  victims  in  the  affair. 
These  are  the  items  of  the  miserable 
business.  The  two  Bentons  are  in  the 
doorway  as  Jackson  and  his  friend  Co- 
lonel Coffee  approach.  Jackson,  with 
a  word  of  warning  to  Benton,  brandish- 
es his  riding- whip;  the  Colonel  fum- 
bles for  a  pistol ;  the  General  presents 
his  own,  and  at  the  instant  receives  in 
his  arm  and  shoulder  a  slug  and  bullet 
from  the  barrel  of  Jesse  Benton,  who 
stands  behind.  Jackson  is  thus  dropped, 
weltering  in  his  blood  with  a  desperate 
wound.  Coffee  thereupon  thinking 
Tom  Benton's  pistol  had  done  the 
work,  takes  aim  at  him,  misses  fire,  and 
is  making  for  his  victim  with  the  butt 
end,  when  an  opportune  cellar  stair- 
way opens  to  the  retreating  Colonel, 
who  is  precipitated  to  the  bottom. 
Meanwhile  Stokely  Hays  arrives,  intent 
on  plunging  the  sword,  which  he  drew 
from  his  cane,  into  the  body  of  Jesse 
Benton.  He  deals  the  thrust  with  unc- 
tion, but  striking  a  button,  its  force 
is  lost  and  the  weapon  shivered.  A 
struggle  on  the  floor  then  ensues  be- 

oo 

tween  the  parties,  the  fatal  dagger  of 
Hays  being  raised  to  transfix  his  wound- 
ed victim,  when  it  is  intercepted  by 


624: 


ANDREW  JACKSOK 


a  bystander,  and  the  murderous  and 
bloody  work  is  over.  Such  was  the 
famous  Benton  feud.  It  laid  Jackson 
ingloriously  up  for  several  weeks,  and 
drove  Colonel  Benton  to  Missouri. 
There  was  a  long  interval  of  mutual 
hostile  feeling,  to  be  succeeded  by  a 
devoted  friendship  of  no  ordinary  in- 
tensity. 

This  Benton  affray  took  place  on 
the  4th  of  September,  1813.  A  few 
days  before,  on  the  30th  of  August,  oc- 
curred the  massacre  by  the  Creek  In- 
dians of  the  garrison  and  inhabitants 
at  Fort  Minims,  a  frontier  post  in  the 
southern  part  of  Alabama.  A  large 
number  of  neighboring  settlers,  anxious 
for  their  safety,  had  taken  refuge  with- 
in the  stockade.  The  assailants  took 
it  by  surprise,  and  though  the  defend- 
ers fought  with  courage,  but  few  of  its 
inhabitants  escaped  the  terrible  car- 
nage. The  Indians  were  led  by  a  re- 
doubtable chieftain,  named  Weathers- 
ford,  the  son  of  a  white  man  and  a  Se- 
minole  mother,  a  leader  of  sagacity, 
of  great  bravery  and  heroism,  and 
of  no  ordinary  magnanimity.  He  was 
unable,  however,  to  arrest,  as  he  would, 
the  fiendish  atrocities  committed  at 
the  fort.  Women  and  children  were 
sacrificed  in  the  horrible  rage  for  slaugh- 
ter, and  the  bloody  deed  was  aggrava- 
ted by  the  most  indecent  mutilations. 
A  cry  was  spread  through  the  South- 
west similar  to  that  raised  in  our  own 
day  in  India,  at  the  Sepoy  brutalities. 
Vengeance  was  demanded  alike  for 
safety  and  retribution.  On  the  18th 
of  September,  the  news  had  reached 
Nashville,  four  hundred  miles  distant, 
and  General  Jackson  was  called  into 
Consultation  as  he  sat,  utterly  disabled 


with  his  Benton  wounds,  in  his  sick 
room.  It  was  resolved  that  a  large 
body  of  volunteers  should  be  sum- 
moned, and,  ill  as  he  was,  he  promised 
to  take  command  of  them  when  they 
were  collected.  Still  suffering  severely, 
before  they  were  ready  to  move  he 
joined  them  at  Fayetteville,  the  place 
of  meeting.  He  arrived  in  camp  the 
seventh  of  October,  and  began  his 
work  of  organizing  the  companies. 
Everything  was  to  be  done  in  drill  and 
preparation  for  the  advance  into  a  wil- 
derness where  no  supplies  were  to  be 
had ;  yet  in  four  days,  a  report  having 
reached  him  that  the  enemy  were  ap- 
proaching, he  led  his  troops,  about  a 
thousand  men,  an  afternoon  march  of 
thirty-two  miles  in  six  hours  to  Hunts- 
ville.  The  Indians,  however,  were  not 
yet  at  hand,  and  joining  Colonel  Coffee, 
whom  he  had  sent  forward  with  a  cav- 
alry command,  on  the  banks  of  the 
Tennessee,  he  was  reluctantly  com- 
pelled to  wait  there  too  long  a  time  for 
his  impatience,  till  something  could  be 
done  in  providing  stores,  in  which  the 
army  was  lamentably  deficient.  A 
post  was  established  on  the  river, 
named  Fort  Deposit,  whence  Jackson, 
still  inadequately  provided,  set  out,  on 
the  twenty-fifth  of  the  month,  on  hia 
southward  march,  and  carried  his  force 
to  an  encampment  at  Ten  Islands, 
on  the  Coosa  River.  There  Coffee 
was  detached  to  attack  a  body  of  In- 
dians at  their  town  of  Talluschatches, 
He  performed  the  service  with  equal 
skill  and  gallantry;  and  though  the 
Creeks,  as  they  did  throughout  the 
war,  fought  with  extraordinary  valor, 
urged  on  by  religious  fanaticism,  he 
gained  a  brilliant  victory.  One  of  the 


ANDREW  JACKSOK 


625 


incidents  of  the  bloody  field  was  the 
accidental  slaughter  of  an  Indian  mo- 
ther clasping  her  infant  to  her  breast. 
The  child  was  carried  to  Jackson,  who 
had  it  tenderly  cared  for,  and  finally 
taken  to  his  home.  The  boy,  named 
Lincoyer,  was  brought  up  at  the  Her- 
mitage, and  suitably  provided  for  by 
the  general. 

The  next  adventure  of  the  campaign 
was  an  expedition  led  by  Jackson  him- 
self to  relieve  a  camp  of  friendly  In- 
dians at  Talladega,  invested  by  a  large 
band  of  hostile  Creeks.  The  very 
night  on  which  he  received  the  message 
asking  aid,  brought  by  a  runner  who 
had  escaped  from  the  beleaguered  fort 
in  disguise,  he  started  with  a  force  of 
two  thousand  men,  eight  hundred  of 
whom  were  mounted,  and  in  a  long 
day's  march  through  the  wilderness 
traversed  the  intervening  distance, 
some  thirty  miles,  to  the  neighborhood 
of  the  fort.  The  dawn  of  the  next 
morning  saw  him  approaching  the  ene- 
my— a  thousand  picked  warriors.  Dis- 
posing the  infantry  in  three  lines,  he 
placed  the  cavalry  on  the  extreme 
wings,  to  advance  in  a  curve  and  in- 
close the  foe  in  a  circle.  A  guard  was 
sent  forward  to  challenge  an  engage- 
ment. The  Indians  received  its  fire 
and  followed  in  pursuit,  when  the  front 
line  was  ordered  up  to  the  combat. 
There  was  some  misunderstanding,  and 
a  portion  of  the  militia  composing  it 
retreated,  when  the  general  promptly 
supplied,  their  place  by  dismounting  a 
corps  of  cavalry  kept  as  a  reserve. 
The  militia  then  rallied,  the  fire  became 
general,  and  the  enemy  were  repulsed 
in  every  direction.  They  were  pursued 
by  the  cavalry  and  slaughtered  in  great 
•  79 


numbers,  two  hundred  and  ninety 
being  left  dead  on  the  field  and  many 
more  bore  the  marks  of  the  engagement. 
The  American  loss  was  fifteen  killed 
and  eighty-five  wounded.  The  friendly 
Creeks  came  forth  from  the  fort  to 
thank  their  deliverers,  and  share  with 
them  their  small  supply  of  food. 

This  was  emphatically,  contrary  to  all 
the  rules  of  war,  a  hungry  campaign. 
On  his  return  to  his  camp,  to  which, 
having  been  fortified,  the  name  Fort 
Strother  was  given,  Jackson  found  the 
supplies  which  he  had  urgently  demand- 
ed, and  which  he  so  much  needed,  not 
yet  arrived.  His  private  stores,  which 
had  been  bought  and  forwarded  at  his 
expense,  were  exhausted  to  relieve  the 
wants  of  his  men.  He  himself,  with 
his  oificers,  subsisted  on  unseasoned 
tripe,  like  the  poor  and  proud  Spanish 
grandee  in  the  Adventure  of  Lazarillo 
de  Tormes,  eulogizing  the  horse's  foot, 
maintaining  that  he  liked  nothing  bet- 
ter. The  story  is  told  of  a  starving 
soldier  approaching  him  at  this  time 
with  a  request  for  food.  "  I  will  give 
you,"  said  the  general,  "  what  I  have," 
and  with  that  he  drew  from  his  pocket 
a  few  acorns,  "  my  best  and  only  fare." 

Food,  food,  was  the  constant  cry  of 
Jackson  in  his  messages  to  the  rulers 
in  the  adjoining  States.  It  was  long 
in  coming,  and  in  the  meanwhile  the 
commander,  eager  to  follow  up  his  suc- 
cesses and  close  the  war,  was  con- 
demned to  remain  in  inactivity — the 
hardest  trial  for  a  man  of  his  temper 
Scant  subsistence  and  the  hardships 
common  to  all  encampments  brought 
discontent.  The  men  longed  to  be  at 
home,  and  symptoms  of  revolt  began 
to  appear.  The  militia  actually  com- 


026 


ANDREW  JACKSON. 


menced  their  march  backward;  but 
they  had  reckoned  without  their  leader. 
On  starting  they  found  the  volunteers 
drawn  up  to  oppose  their  progress,  and 
abandoned  their  design.  Such  was  the 
force  of  Jackson's  authority  in  the 
camp,  that  when  these  volunteers,  who 
were  in  reality  disappointed  that  the 
movement  did  not  succeed,  attempted 
in  their  turn  to  escape,  they  were  in 
like  manner  met  by  the  militia.  The 
occasion  required  all  Jackson's  ingenu- 
ity and  resolution,  and  both  were  freely 
expended.  His  iron  will  had  to  yield 
something  in  the  way  of  compromise. 
Appealing  to  his  men,  he  secured  a 
band  of  the  most  impressible  to  remain 
at  Fort  Strother,  while  he  led  the  rest 
in  quest  of  provisions  toward  Fort  De- 
posit, The  understanding  was  that 
they  were  to  return  with  him  when 
food  was  obtained.  They  had  not 
gone  far  when  they  met  a  drove  of  cat- 
tle on  their  way  to  the  camp.  A  feast 
was  enjoyed  on  the  spot ;  but  the  men 
were  still  intent  on  going  homeward. 
Nearly  the  whole  brigade  was  ready 
for  motion,  when  Jackson  who  had 
ordered  their  return,  was  informed  of 
their  intention.  His  resolution  was 
taken  on  the  instant.  He  summoned 
his  staff,  and  gave  the  command  to  fire 
on  the  mutineers  if  they  attempted  to 
proceed.  One  company,  already  on 
the  way,  was  thus  turned  back,  when, 
going  forth  alone  among  the  men,  he 
found  the  movement  likely  to  become 
general.  There  was  no  choice  in  his 
mind  but  resistance  at  the  peril  of  his 
life,  for  the  men  once  gone,  the  whole 
campaign  was  at  an  end  Seizing  a 
musket,  he  rested  the  bairel  on  the 
neck  of  his  horse — lie  was  unable,  from 


his  wound,  to  use  his  left  arm — and 
threatened  to  shoot  the  first  who  should 
attempt  to  advance.  An  intimation  of 
this  kind  from  Jackson  was  never  to  be 
despised.  The  men  knew  it,  and  re- 
turned to  their  post.  They  yielded  to 
the  energy  of  a  superior  mind,  but 
they  were  not  content.  Their  next 
resource  was,  an  assertion  of  the  termi- 
nation of  their  year's  enlistment,  which 
they  said  would  expire  on  the  tenth  of 
December;  but  here  they  were  met  by 
the  astute  lawyer,  who  reminded  them 
that  they  were  pledged  to  serve  one 
year  out  of  two,  and  that  the  year 
must  be  an  actual  service  in  the  field 
of  three  hundred  and  sixty-five  days. 
The  argument,  however,  failed  to  con- 
vince, and  as  the  day  approached,  the 
men  were  more  resolute  for  their  de- 
parture. They  addressed  a  courteous 
letter  to  their  commander,  to  which  he 
replied  in  an  earnest  expostulatory  ad- 
dress. "  I  know  not,"  he  said,  "  what 
scenes  will  be  exhibited  on  the  tenth 
instant,  nor  what  consequences  are 
to  flow  from  them  here  or  elsewhere ; 
but  as  I  shall  have  the  consciousness 
that  they  are  not  imputable  to  any  mis- 
conduct of  mine,  I  trust  I  shall  have 
the  firmness  not  to  shrink  from  a  dis- 
charge of  my  duty."  The  appeal  was 
not  heeded,  and  on  the  evening  of  the 
ninth  the  signs  of  mutiny  were  not  to 
be  mistaken.  The  general  took  his 
measures  accordingly.  He  ordered  all 
officers  and  soldiers  to  their  duty,  and 
stationed  the  artillery  company  with 
their  two  pieces  in  front  and  rear,  while 
he  posted  the  militia  on  an  eminence 
iL.  advance.  He  himself  rode  along 
the  line  and  addressed  the  men,  in 
their  companies,  with  great  earnestness. 


ATsDKEW  JACKSON. 


027 


He  talked  of  the  disgrace  their  conduct 
would  bring  upon  themselves,  their 
families  and  country ;  that  they  would 
succeed  only  by  passing  over  his  dead 
body :  while  he  held  out  to  them  the 
prospect  of  reinforcements.  "  I  am 
too,"  he  said,  "  in  daily  expectation  of 
receiving  information  whether  you  may 
be  discharged  or  not ;  until  then,  you 
must  not  and  shall  not  retire.  I  have 
done  with  entreaty ;  it  has  been  used 
long  enough.  I  will  attempt  it  no 
more.  You  must  now  determine  whe- 
ther you  will  go,  or  peaceably  remain ; 
if  you  still  persist  in  your  determina- 
tion to  move  forcibly  off,  the  point  be- 
tween us  shall  soon  be  decided."  There 
was  hesitation.  He  demanded  a  posi- 
tive answer.  Again  a  slight  delay. 
The  artillerist  was  ordered  to  prepare 
the  match.  The  word  of  surrender 
passed  along  the  line,  and  a  second 
time  the  rebellious  volunteers  suc- 
cumbed to  the  will  of  their  master. 
These,  it  should  be  stated,  were  the 
very  men,  the  original  company,  whom 
Jackson  had  carried  to  Natchez,  and 
for  whose  welfare  on  their  return  he 
had  pledged  his  property.  But  in  vain 
he  reminded  them  of  the  fact,  and  ap- 
pealed to  their  sense  of  generosity  to 
remain  in  the  service.  He  gave  them 
finally  the  choice  to  proceed  to  Tennes- 
see or  remain  with  him.  They  chose 
the  former,  and  he  let  them  go. 

The  men  he  had  left  with  him  were 
enlisted  for  short  periods,  or  so  under- 
stood it.  There  was  little  to  build 
upon  for  the  campaign,  and  he  was 
even  advised  by  the  Governor  of  Ten- 
nessee, to  abandon  the  prosecution  of 
the  war,  at  least  for  the  present,  or  till 
the  administration  at  Washington 


should  provide  better  means  for  carry- 
ing it  on.  This  was  not  advice,  des- 
perate as  appeared  the  situation,  to  be 
accepted  by  Jackson.  His  reply  was 
eminently  characteristic — charged  with 
a  determined  self-reliance  which  he 
sought  to  infuse  into  his  correspondent. 
"  Take  the  responsibility  "  is  written 
all  over  it.  The  governor  had  said 
that  his  power  ceased  with  the  call  for 
troops.  "Widely  different,"  replies 
Jackson,  "  is  my  opinion.  You  are  to 
see  that  they  come  when  they  are 
called.  Of  what  avail  is  it,"  he  urges 
with  an  earnestness .  savoring  of  sar- 
casm, "  to  give  an  order  if  it  be  never 
executed,  and  may  be  disobeyed  with, 
impunity  ?  Is  it  by  empty  mandates 
that  we  can  hope  to  conquer  our  ene- 
mies and  save  our  defenceless  frontiers 
from  butchery  and  devastation?  Be- 
lieve me,  my  valued  friend,  there  are 
times  when  it  is  highly  criminal  to 
shrink  from  responsibility,  or  scruple 
about  the  exercise  of  our  powers. 
There  are  times  when  we  must  disre- 
gard punctilious  etiquette  and  think 
only  of  serving  our  country."  He  also 
presented,  in  like  forcible  terms,  the 
injurious  effects  of  abandoning  the 
frontiers  to  the  mercy  of  the  savage. 
The  governor  took  the  advice  to  heart, 
pointedly  as  it  was  given  ;  he  ordered 
a  fresh  force  of  twenty -five  hundred 
militia  into  the  field,  and  seconded 
General  Jackson's  call  upon  General 
Cocke  for  the  troops  of  East  Tennessee. 
Meantime,  however,  Jackson's  force  at 
Fort  Strother  was  reduced  to  a  mini 
mum ;  the  militia,  enlisted  for  short 
terms,  would  go,  and  there  was  great 
difficulty  in  getting  new  recruits  on  to 
their  places.  The  brave  Coffee 


628 


ANDEEW  JACKSON. 


failed  to  reenlist  Ms  old  regiment  of 
cavalry.  There  was  a  strange  want  of 
alacrity  through  the  early  period  of 
this  war,  in  raising  and  disciplining 
the  militia.  With  a  proper  force  at 
his  command,  duly  equipped  and  sup- 
plied, Jackson  would  have  brought 
the  savages  to  terms  in  a  month.  As 
it  was,  nearly  a  year  elapsed  ;  but  the 
ighting  period,  when  he  was  once 
ready  to  move,  was  of  short  duration. 
While  he  was  waiting  for  the  new 
Tennessee  enlistments,  he  determined 
to  nave  one  brush  with  the  enemy  with 
such  troops  as  he  had.  He  according- 
ly set  in  motion  his  little  force  of  eight 
hundred  raw  recruits  on  the  fifteenth 
of  January,  on  an  excursion  into  the 
Indian  territory.  At  Talladega  he  was 
joined  by  between  two  and  three  hun- 
dred friendly  Cherokees  and  Creeks, 
with  whom  he  advanced  against  the 
foe,  who  were  assembled  on  the  banks 
of  the  Tallapoosa,  near  Emuckfau.  He 
reached  their  neighborhood  on  the 
night  of  the  twenty-first,  and  prepared 
his  camp  for  an  attack  before  morning. 
The  Indians  came,  as  was  expected, 
about  dawn ;  were  repulsed,  and  when 
daylight  afforded  the  opportunity, 
were  pursued  with  slaughter.  There 
tvas  another  sharp  conflict  about  the 
middle  of  the  day,  which  ended  in  a 
victory  for  the  Americans,  at  some  cost 
to  the  conquerors,  who,  ill-prepared  to 
keep  the  field,  moved  back  toward  the 
fort.  Enotochopco  Creek  was  reached 
and  crossed  by  a  part  of  the  force, 
when  the  Indians  fell  upon  the  rear 
guard,  who  turned  and  fled  ;  the  artil- 
lery, however,  still  left  on  that  side  of 
the  river,  gave  the  savages  a  warm  re- 
ception, when  they  were  pursued  by 


the  cavalry,  which  had  recrossed  tne 
stream. 

By  this  time  the  country  was  roused 
to  some  adequate  support  of  its  gene- 
ral in  the  field.  At  the  end  of  Febru 
ary,  Jackson  was  reinforced  by  the  ar 
rival  at  Fort.  Strother  of  a  force  from 
East  and  West  Tennessee  of  about  five 
thousand  men.  By  the  middle  of  the 
next  month  he  was  in  motion,  terribly 
in  earnest  for  a  short  and  summary  ex 
tirpation  of  the  savages.  The  execu- 
tion of  John  Woods,  a  Tennessee 
youth  who  had  shown  some  insubordi- 
nation in  camp,  was  a  prelude  to  the 
approaching  tempest.  The  commander 
thought  it  necessary  to  the  unity  and 
integrity  of  the  service.  Fortunately 
for  the  purposes  of  this  new  invasion, 
the  chief  warriors  of  the  nation  assem- 
bled themselves  at  a  place  convenient 
enough  for  defence,  but  where  defeat 
was  ruin.  It  was  at  Tohopeka,  an  In 
dian  name  for  the  horse-shoe  bend  of 
the  Tallapoosa,  an  area  of  a  hundred 
acres  inclosed  by  the  deep  waters  of 
the  river,  and  protected  at  its  junction 
with  the  land  by  a  heavy  breastwork 
of  logs  pierced  for  musketry  and  skill- 
fully  arranged  for  defence.  Within 
this  inclosure,  at  the  time  of  Jackson's 
arrival,on  the  twenty-seventh  of  March, 
with  less  than  three  thousand  men,  in- 
cluding a  regiment  of  regulars  under 
Colonel  Williams,  were  assembled  some 
eight  or  nine  hundred  warriors  of  the 
Creeks.  The  plan  of  attack  was  thus 
arranged.  Sending  General  Coffee  to 
the  opposite  side  of  the  river  to  effect 
a  diversion  in  that  quarter,  Jackson 
himself  directed  the  assault  on  the 
works  at  the  neck.  He  had  two  field 
pieces,  which  were  advantageously 


ANDREW   JACKSON. 


629 


planted  on  a  neighboring  eminence. 
His  main  reliance,  however,  was  at 
close  quarters  with  his  musketry.  On 
the  river  side  General  Coffee  succeeded 
in  inclosing  the  bend  and  cutting  off 
escape  by  the  canoes,  which  he  cap- 
tured by  the  aid  of  his  friendly  In- 
dians, and  used  as  a  means  of  landing" 

7  o 

in  the  rear  of  the  enemy's  position. 
This  success  was  the  signal  for  the  as- 
sault in  front.  Regulars  and  volun- 
teers, eager  for  the  contest,  advanced 
boldly  up.  Reaching  the  rampart,  the 
struggle  was  for  the  port-holes,through 
which  to  fire,  musket  meeting  musket 
in  the  close  encounter.  "  Many  of  the 
says  Eaton,  "  were 


enemy  s 


balls," 


welded  between  the  muskets  and  bay- 
onets of  our  soldiers.  Major  Montgo- 
mery, of  Willianis's  regiment,  led  the 
way  on  the  rampart,  and  fell  dead  sum- 
moning his  men  to  follow.  Others 
succeeded,  and  the  fort  was  taken.  In 
vain  was  the  fight  kept  up  within,  from 
the  shelter  of  the  fallen  trees,  and 
equally  hopeless  was  the  attempt  at 
escape  by  the  river.  No  quarter  was 
asked,  and  none  given,  for  none  would 
be  received.  Women  and  children 
were  the  only  prisoners.  It  was  a  des- 
perate slaughter.  Nearly  the  whole 
band  of  Indians  perished,  selling  their 
lives  as  dearly  as  possible.  The  Amer- 
ican loss  was  fifty-five  killed  and  about 
thrice  the  number  wounded ;  but  the 
Cherokee  dead  were  to  be  counted  by 
hundreds.  Having  struck  this  fearful 
blow,  Jackson  retired  to  Fort  Williams, 
which  he  had  built  on  his  march,  and 
issued,  as  was  his  wont — he  was  quite 
equal  to  Napoleon  in  this  respect — an 
inspiriting  address  to  his  troops.  If 
the  words  are  not  always  his,  the  sen- 


timent, as  his  biographer  suggests,  is 
ever  Jacksonian.  Somebody  or  other 
was  always  found  to  give  expression  to 
his  ardent  ejaculations,  which  need 
only  the  broad  theatre  of  a  European 
battlefield  to  vie  with  the  thrilling 
manifestoes  of  Bonaparte.  "  The  fiends 
of  the  Tallapoosa  will  no  longer  mur- 
der our  women  and  children,  or  disturb 
the  quiet  of  our  borders.  Their  mid- 
night flambeaux  will  no  more  illumine 
their  council-house,  or  shine  upon  the 
victim  of  their  infernal  orgies."  The 
gratifying  event  was  nearer  even  than 
the  general  anticipated.  He  looked 
for  a  further  struggle,  but  the  spirit  of 
the  nation  was  broken.  Advancing 
southward,  he  joined  the  troops  from 
the  south  at  the  junction  of  the  Coosa 
and  Tallapoosa,  the  "  Holy  Ground  " 
of  the  Indians,  where  he  received  their 
offers  of  submission.  The  brave  chief- 
tain, Weathersford,  voluntarily  surren 
dered  himself.  A  portion  of  the  In- 
dians fled  to  Florida.  Those  who 
were  left  were  ordered  to  the  northern 
parts  of  Alabama,  Fort  Jackson  being 
established  at  the  confluence  of  the 
rivers  to  cut  off  their  communication 
with  foreign  enemies  on  the  seaboard. 
The  war  had  originally  grown  out  of 
the  first  English  successes  and  the 
movements  of  Tecumseh  on  the  north- 
ern frontier,  and  was  assisted  by  Span 
ish  sympathy  on  the  Gulf. 

J  ackson  was  now  at  liberty  to  return 
to  Nashville  with  the  troops  who  had 
shared  his  victories.  He  had  of  course 
a  triumphant  reception  in  Tennessee, 
and  his  services  were  rewarded  at 
Washington  by  the  appointment  of 
major-general  in  the  army  of  the  Uui» 
ted  States,  the  resignation  ol  Genera] 


030 


ANDREW  JACKSON. 


Harrison  at  the  moment  placing  this 
high  honor  at  the  disposal  of  the  gov- 
ernment. It  was  an  honor  well  de- 
served, earned  by  long  and  patient  ser- 
vice under  no  ordinary  difficulties — 
difficulties  inherent  to  the  position, 
aggravated  by  the  delays  of  others, 
and  some,  formidable  enough  to  most 
men,  which  he  carried  with  him 
bound  up  in  his  own  frame.  We  so 
naturally  associate  health  and  bodily 
vigor  with  brilliant  military  achieve- 
ments that  it  requires  an  effort  of  the 
mind  to  figure  Jackson  as  he  really 
was  in  these  campaigns.  We  have 
seen  him  carrying  his  arm  in  a  sling, 
unable  to  handle  a  musket  when  he 
confronted  his  retiring  army ;  but  that 
was  a  slight  inconvenience  of  his 
wound  compared  with  the  gnawing 
disease  which  was  preying  upon  his 
system.  "  Chronic  diarrhoea,'7  says  his 
biographer,  "  was  the  form  which  his 
complaint  assumed.  The  slightest  im- 
prudence in  eating  or  drinking  brought 
on  an  attack,  during  which  he  suffered 
intensely.  While  the  paroxysm  lasted 
be  could  obtain  relief  only  by  sitting 
on  a  chair  with  his  chest  against  the 
back  of  it  and  his  arms  dangling  for- 
ward. In  this  position  he  was  some- 
times compelled  to  remain  for  hours. 
It  often  happened  that  he  was  seized 
with  the  familiar  pain  while  on  the 
march  through  the  woods  at  the  head 
of  the  troops.  In  the  absence  of  other 
means  of  relief  he  would  have  a  sap- 
ling half  severed  and  bent  over,  upon 
which  he  would  hang  with  his  arms 
downward,  till  the  agony  subsided." 

In  July,  General  Jackson  was  again 
at  the  South,  on  the  Alabama,  presid- 
ing at  the  Treaty  Conference  with  the 


Indians.  The  terms  he  proposed  were 
thought  hard,  but  he  was  inexorable 
in  requiring  them.  The  treaty  of  Fort 
Jackson,  signed  on  the  tenth  of  Au- 
gust, stripped  the  Creeks  of  more  than 
half  of  their  possessions,  confining 
them  to  a  region  least  inconvenient  to 
the  peaceful  enjoyment  of  the  neigh- 
boring States.  "  As  a  national  mark 
of  gratitude,"  the  friendly  Creeks  be- 
stowed upon  General  Jackson  and  his 
associate  in  the  treaty,  Colonel  Haw- 
kins, three  miles  square  of  land  to 
each,  with  a  request  that  the  United 
States  Government  would  ratify  the 
gift ;  but  this,  though  recommended  to 
Congress  by  President  Madison,  was 
never  carried  into  effect. 

While  the  treaty  was  still  under  ne- 
gotiation, Jackson  was  intent  on  the 
next  movement  of  the  war,  which  he 
foresaw  would  carry  him  to  the  shores 
of  the  Gulf.  He  knew  the  sympathy 
of  the  Spaniards  in  Florida  with  the 
English,  and  was  prepared  for  the  de- 
signs of  the  latter  against  the  southern 
country.  Having  obtained  informa- 
tion that  British  muskets  were  distri- 
buted among  the  Indians,  and  that 
English  troops  had  been  landed  in 
Florida,  he  applied  to  the  Secretary  of 
War,  General  Armstrong,  for  permis 
sion  to  call  out  the  militia  and  reduce 
Pensacola  at  once.  The  matter  was 
left  to  the  discretion  of  the  commander, 
but  the  letter  conferring  the  authority 
did  not  reach  him  for  six  months.  In 
the  mean  time  he  felt  compelled  to  take 
the  management  of  the  war  into  his 
own  hands.  Fully  aware  of  the  im- 
pending struggle,  he  was  in  corres- 
pondence with  Governor  Claiborne  of 
Louisiana,  putting  him  071  his  guard 


ANDREW  JACKSON. 


an<l  with  Maurequez,  the  Spanish  gov- 
ernor of  Pensacola,  calling  him  to  a 
strict  account  for  his  tampering  with 
the  enemy.  To  be  nearer  the  scene  of 
operations,  he  removed,  immediately 
after  the  conclusion  of  the  treaty,  to 
Mobile,  where  he  could  gain  the  ear- 
liest intelligence  of  the  movements  of 
the  British.  Learning  there,  in  Sep- 
tember, of  a  threatened  visit  of  the  fleet, 
under  the  orders  of  Colonel  Nichols, 
to  Mobile,  he  called  loudly  upon  the 
governors  of  the  adjoining  States  for 
aid,  and  gave  the  word  to  his  adjutant, 
Colonel  Butler,  in  Tennessee,  to  enlist 
and  bring  on  his  forces.  They  respond- 
ed eagerly  to  the  call,  for  the  name  of 
Jackson  was  now  identified  with  glory 
and  victory,  which  they  were  ambitious 
to  share.  His  old  friend,  General  Cof- 
fee, was  their  leader.  Before  they  ar- 
rived, the  fort  at  the  mouth  of  the  bay 
was  put  in  a  state  of  defence  under 
the  command  of  Major  Lawrence,  of 
the  United  States  infantry.  In  the 
afternoon  of  the  fifteenth  of  Septem- 
ber, it  was  his  fortune  to  maintain  the 
post  against  a  bombardment  by  the 
British  fleet  of  Captain  Percy,  which 
recalls  both  the  attack  and  success  of 
the  defenders  at  Fort  Sullivan,  in  the 
war  of  the  Revolution.  What  Moul- 
trie  and  his  brave  men  did  on  that  day 
in  repelling  the  assault  of  Sir  Peter 
Parker  and  his  ships,  was  now  done  by 
Lawrence  at  Fort  Bowyer.  "Don't 
give  up  the  fort"  was  his  motto,  as 
"Don't  give  up  the  ship"  had  been 
uttered  by  his  namesake  on  the  "  dy- 
ing deck  "  of  the  Chesapeake,  the  year 
before.  The  fort  was  not  given  up. 
Percy's  flagship,  the  Hermes,  was  de- 
stroyed, and  the  remainder  of  his  com- 


mand returned,  seriously   injured,  to 
Pensacola. 

General  Jackson  rejoiced  in  this 
victory  at  Mobile,  and  waited  only  the 
arrival  of  his  forces  to  carry  the  war 
home  to  the  British  in  Florida.  At 
the  end  of  October,  General  Coffee  ar- 
rived with  twenty-eight  hundred  men 
on  the  Mobile  Kiver,  where  Jackson 
joined  him,  and,  mustering  his  forces  to 
the  number  of  three  thousand,  marched 
on  the  third  of  November  against  Pen- 
sacola. Owing  to  the  difficulty  of 
obtaining  forage  on  the  way,  the  cav- 
alry was  dismounted.  The  troops  had 
rations  for  eight  days.  On  his  arrival 
before  the  town,  being  desirous  as  far 
as  possible  of  presenting  his  move- 
ments in  a  peaceful  light,  General  Jack- 
son sent  a  messenger  forward  to  de- 
mand possession  of  the  forts,  to  be  held 
by  the  United  States  "  until  Spain,  by 
by  furnishing  a  sufficient  force,  might 
be  able  to  protect  the  province  and 
preserve  unimpaired  her  neutral  char- 
acter." On  approaching  the  fort  the 
bearer  of  the  flag  was  £red  on  and 
compelled  to  retire.  Aware  of  the 
delicacy  of  his  self-imposed  undertak- 
ing, before  proceeding  to  extremities 
he  sent  a  second  message  to  the  gover- 
nor, by  a  Spanish  corporal  who  hud 
been  captured  on  his  route.  This  time, 
word  was  brought  back  that  the  gov- 
ernor was  ready  to  listen  to  his  propo- 
sals. He  accordingly  sent  Major  Piere 
a  second  time  with  his  demands.  A 
council  was  held,  and  they  were  re- 
fused. Nothing  was  then  left  but  to 
proceed.  The  town  was  gained  by  a 
simple  stratagem.  Arranging  a  por- 
tion of  his  troops  as  if  to  advance  di- 
rectly ;>n  his  road,  he  drew  the  British 


632 


ANDREW  JACKSOK 


shipping  to  a  position  on  that  side, 
when,  by  a  rapid  march,  he  suddenly 
presented  his  main  force  on  the  other. 
He  consequently  entered  the  town  be- 
fore the  movement  could  be  met.  A 
street  fight  ensued,  and  a  barrier  was 
taken,  when  the  governor  appeared 
with  a  flag  of  truce.  General  Jackson 
met  him  and  demanded  the  surrender 
of  the  military  defences,  which  was 
conceded.  Some  delay,  however,  oc- 
curred, which  ended  in  the  delivery  of 
the  fortifications,  of  the  town,  and  the 
blowing  up  of  the  fort  at  the  mouth 
of  the  harbor.  Having  accomplished 
this  feat,  the  British  fleet  sailed  away 
before  morning.  Whither  were  they 
bound  ?  To  Fort  Bowyer  and  Mobile 
in  all  probability,  and  thither  Jack- 
son, leaving  the  Spanish  governor  on 
friendly  terms  behind  him,  hastened 
his  steps.  Tarrying  a  few  days  for  the 
British,  who  did  not  come,  he  took 
his  departure  for  New  Orleans,  with 
his  staff,  and  in  a  journey  of  nine  days 
reached  the  city  on  the  first  of  De- 
cember. 

If  ever  the  force  of  a  single  will, 
the  safety  which  may  be  provided  for 
an  imperilled  people  by  the  confidence 
of  one  strong  right  arm,  were  fully  il- 
lustrated, it  would  seem  to  be  in  the 
military  drama  which  was  enacted  in 
this  and  the  following  month  on  the 
banks  of  the  Mississippi.  Andrew 
Jackson  was  the  chief  actor.  Louisia- 
na had  brave  men  in  her  midst,  numer- 
ous in  proportion  to  her  mixed  popula- 
tion and  still  unsettled  condition;  but 
whom  had  she,  at  once  with  experience 
and  authority,  to  summon  on  the  in- 
stant out  of  the  discordant  materials  a 
band  strong  enough  for  her  preserva-  ' 


tion?  At  the  time  of  General  Jack 
son's  arrival  a  large  fleet  of  the  enemy 
was  hovering  on  the  coast,  amply  pro- 
vided with  every  resource  of  naval  and 
military  art,  bearing  a  host  of  the  ve- 
teran troops  of  England,  experienced 
in  the  bloody  contests  under  Welling- 
ton  —  an  expedition  compared  with 
which  the  best  means  of  defence  at 
hand  for  the  inhabitants  of  New  Or- 
leans resembled  the  resistance  of  the 
reeds  on  the  river  bank  to  Behemoth. 
It  was  the  genius  of  Andrew  Jackson 
which  made  those  reeds  a  rampart  01 
iron.  He  infused  his  indomitable  cour- 
age and  resolution  in  the  whole  mass 
of  citizens.  A  few  troops  of  hunters,  a 
handful  of  militia,  a  band  of  smugglers, 
a  company  of  negroes,  a  group  of  peace 
ful  citizens,  stiffened  under  his  inspira 
tion  into  an  army.  Without  Jackson, 
irresolution,  divided  counsels,  and  sur- 
render, might,  with  little  reproach  to 
the  inhabitants,  under  the  circumstan- 
ces, have  been  the  history  of  one  fatal 
fortnight.  With  Jackson  all  was  union, 
confidence  and  victory. 

The  instant  of  his  arrival  he  set 
about  the  work  of  organization,  re- 
viewing the  military  companies  of  the 
city,  selecting  his  staff,  personally  ex 
amining  the  approaches  from  the  sea 
and  arranging  means  of  defence.  He 
was  determined  that  the  first  step  of 
the  enemy  on  landing  should  be  resis- 
ted. This  was  the  inspiration  of  the 
military  movements  which  followed, 
and  the  secret  of  his  success.  He  did 
not  get  behind  intrenchments  and  wait 
for  the  foe  to  come  up,  but  determined 
to  go  forth  and  meet  him  on  the  way. 
He  was  not  there  so  much  to  defend 
New  Orleans,  as  to  attack  an  army  of 


AJXDBEW  JACKSOK 


633 


insolent  intruders  and  drive  them  into 
the  sea.  They  might  be  thousands,  and 
his  force  might  be  only  hundreds ;  but 
he  knew  of  but  one  resolve,  to  fight  to 
the  uttermost,  and  he  pursued  the 
resolution  as  if  he  were  revenging  a 
personal  insult. 

Events  came  rapidly  on,  as  was  an- 
ticipated, and  attack  was  made  from 
the  fleet  upon  the  gunboats  on  Lake 
Borgne.  They  were  gallantly  defend- 
ed, but  compelled  to  surrender.  This 
action  took  place  on  the  fourteenth  o? 
December.  Now  was  the  time,  if  ever, 
to  meet  the  invading  host.  The  spirit 
of  Jackson  rose,  if  possible,  yet  higher 
with  the  occasion.  Well  knowing  that 
not  a  man  in  the  city  could  be  spared, 
and  the  inefficiency,  in  such  emergen- 
cies, of  the  civil  authority,  he  resolved 
to  take  the  whole  power  in  his  own 
hands.  On  the  sixteenth,  he  proclaim- 
ed martial  law.  Its  effect  was  to  con- 
centrate every  energy  of  the  people 
with  a  single  aim  to  their  deliverance. 
Two  days  after,  a  review  was  held  of 
the  State  militia,  the  volunteer  com- 
panies, and  the  battalion  of  free  men 
of  color,  when  a  stirring  address  was 
read,  penned  by  the  general's  secretary, 
Edward  Livingston — a  little  smoother 
than  "  Old  Hickory's  "  bulletins  in  the 
Alabama  wilderness,  but  not  at  all 
uncertain.  The  Tennessee,  Mississippi, 
and  Kentucky  recruits  had  not  yet  ar- 
rived ;  but  they  were  on  their  way, 
straining  every  nerve  in  forced  marches 
to  meet  the  coming  danger.  Had  the 
British  moved  with  the  same  energy, 
tiae  city  might  have  fallen  to  them.  It 
was  not  till  the  twenty-first,  a  week  af- 
ter their  victory  on  the  lake,  that  they 
began  their  advance,  and  pushed  a 
80 


portion  of  their  force  through  the 
swamps,  reaching  a  plantation  on  the 
river  bank,  six  miles  below  the  city, 
on  the  forenoon  of  the  twenty-third. 
It  was  past  mid-day  when  the  word 
was  brought  to  Jackson  of  their  arri- 
val, and  within  three  hours  a  force  of 
some  two  thousand  men  was  on  the 
way  to  meet  them.  No  attack  was 
expected  by  the  enemy  that  night; 
their  comrades  were  below  in  numbers, 
and  they  anticipated  an  easy  advance 
to  the  city  the  next  morning.  They 
little  knew  the  commander  with  whom 
they  had  to  deal.  That  very  night 
they  must  be  assailed  in  their  position. 
Intrusting  an  important  portion  of  his 
command  to  General  Coffee,  who  was 
on  hand  with  his  brave  Tennesseans, 
charged  with  surrounding  the  enemy 
on  the  land  side,  Jackson  himself  took 
position  in  front  on  the  road,  while  the 
Carolina,  a  war  schooner,  dropped 
down  on  the  river  opposite  the  British 
station.  Her  cannonade,  at  half -past 
seven,  throwing  a  deadly  shower  of 
grape-shot  into  the  encampment,  was 
the  signal  for  the  commencement  of 
this  night  struggle.  It  was  a  fearful 
contest  in  the  darkness,  frequently  of 
hand-to-hand  individual  prowess,  par- 
ticularly where  Coffee's  riflemen  were 
employed.  The  forces  actually  engaged 
are  estimated  on  the  part  of  the  Brit- 
ish, including  a  reinforcement  which 
they  received,  at  more  than  twenty- 
three  hundred ;  about  fifteen  hundred 
Americans  took  part  in  the  fight.  The 
result,  after  an  engagement  of  nearly 
two  hours,  was  a  loss  to  the  latter  of 
twenty- four  killed,  and  one  hundred 
and  eighty-nine  wounded  and  missing. 
The  British  loss  was  much  larger  sus 


634 


ANDREW  JACKSOK 


taining  as  they  did  the  additional  fire 
of  the  schooner. 

Before  daylight,  Jackson  took  up  his 
position  at  a  canal  two  miles  distant 
from  the  camp  of  the  enemy,  and  con- 
sequently within  four  of  the  city.  The 
canal  was  deepened  into  a  trench,  and 
the  earth  thrown  back  formed  an  em- 
bankment, which  was  assisted  by  the 
famous  cotton  bales,  a  device  that 
proved  of  much  less  value  than  has 
been  generally  supposed.  A  fortnight 
was  yet  to  elapse  before  the  final  and 
conclusive  engagement.  Its  main  inci- 
dents were  the  arrival  of  General  Sir 
Edward  Pakenham,  the  commander-in- 
chief,  with  General  Gibbs,  in  the 
British  camp,  on  the  twenty-fifth,  bring- 
ing reinforcements  from  Europe ;  the 
occupation  by  the  Americans  of  a  po- 
sition on  the  opposite  side  of  the  river 
protecting  their  camp  ;  the  destruction 
of  the  "Carolina"  by  red-hot  shot  on  the 
twenty -seventh;  an  advance  of  the 
British,  with  fearful  preparation  of 
artillery,  to  storm  the  works  the  fol- 
lowing day,  which  was  defeated  by  the 
Louisiana  sloop  advantageously  posted 
in  the  river,  and  the  fire  from  the 
American  batteries,  which  were  every 
day  gaining  strength  of  men  and  muni- 
tions ;  the  renewal  of  the  attack  with 
like  ill  success  on  the  first  of  January ; 
the  simultaneous  accession  to  the  Ame- 
rican force  of  over  two  thousand  Ken- 
tucky riflemen,  mostly  without  rifles ; 
a  corresponding  addition  to  the  enemy 
on  the  sixth,  and  a  general  accumula- 
tion of  resources  on  both  sides,  in  pre- 
paration for  the  final  encounter.  On 
the  eighth  of  January,  a  last  attempt 
was  made  on  the  American  front,  which 
extended  about  a  mile  in  a  straight  line 


from  the  river  alonar  the  canal  into  the 

O 

wood.  The  plan  of  attack,  which  was 
well  conceived,  was  to  take  possession 
of  the  American  work  upon  the  oppo- 
site bank  of  the  river,  turn  its  guns 
upon  Camp  Jackson,  and,  under  cover 
of  this  diversion,  scale  the  embankment, 
and  gain  possession  of  the  battery. 
The  first  was  defeated  by  the  want  of 
means,  and  loss  of  time  in  getting  the 
necessary  troops  across  the  river ;  the 
main  attack,  owing  to  some  neglect, 
was  inadequately  supplied  with  scaling 
ladders,  and  the  troops  were  marched 
up  to  slaughter  from  the  murderous  fire 
of  the  artillerymen  and  riflemen  from 
behind  the  embankment.  Throughout 
the  whole  series  of  engagements,  the 
American  batteries,  mounting  twelve 
guns  of  various  calibre,  were  most  skil- 
fully served.  The  loss  on  that  day  oi 
death  was  to  the  defenders  but  eight 
killed  and  thirteen  wounded ;  that  of 
the  assailants  in  killed,  wounded,  and 
missing,  exceeded,  in  their  official  re- 
turns, two  thousand.  A  monument  in 
Westminster  Abbey  attests  the  regret 
of  the  British  public  for  the  death  of  the 
Commander-in-chief,  a  hero  of  the  Pen- 
insular war,  the  lamented  Pakenham. 

Ten  days  after,  having  endured  var- 
ious hardships  in  the  meantime,  the 
British  army,  under  the  direction  of 
General  Lambert,  took  its  departure. 
On  the  twenty-first,  Jackson  broke  up 
his  camp  with  an  address  to  his  troops, 
and  returned  to  New  Orleans  in  tri- 
umph. On  the  twenty-third,  at  his 
request,  a  Te  Deum  was  celebrated  at 
the  cathedral,  when  he  was  received  at 
the  door,  in  a  pleasant  ceremonial,  by  a 
group  of  young  ladies,  representing  the 
States  of  the  Union. 


ANDREW   JACKSON. 


635 


The  conduct  of  Jackson  throughout 
the  month  of  peril,  whilst  the  enemy 
was  on  the  land,  was  such  as  to  secure  j 
him  the  highest  fame  as  a  commander. 
He  had  not  been  called  upon  to  make 
any  extensive  manoeuvres  in  the  field, 
but  he  had  taken  his  dispositions  on 
new  ground  with  a  rapid  and  profound 
calculation  of  the  resources  at  hand. 
His  employment  of  Lafitte  and  his  men 
of  Barrataria,  the  smugglers  whom  he 
had  denounced  from  Mobile  as  "  hellish 
banditti,"  is  proof  of  the  sagacity  with 
which  he  accommodated  himself  to  cir- 
cumstances, and  his  superiority  to  pre- 
judice. They  had  a  character  to  gain, 
and  turned  their  wild  experience  of 
gunnery  to  most  profitable  account  at 
his  battery.  His  personal  exertions 
and  influence  may  be  said  to  have  won 
the  field ;  and  it  should  be  remembered 
in  what  broken  health  he  passed  his 
sleepless  nights,  and  days  of  constant 
anxiety. 

The  departure  of  the  British  did  not 
relax  the  vigilance  of  the  energetic 
Jackson,  Like  the  English  Strafford, 
his  motto  was  "  thorough,"  as  the  good 
people  of  New  Orleans  learnt  before 
this  affair  was  at  an  end.  He  did  not 
abate,  in  the  least,  his  strict  military 
rule,  till  the  last  possible  occasion  for 
its  exercise  had  gone  by.  It  was  con- 
tinued when  the  enemy  had  left,  and 
through  days  and  weeks,  when  as- 
surance of  the  peace  news  was  estab- 
lished to  every  mind  but  his  own.  He 
chose  to  have  certainty,  and  the  ;'  rigor 
of  the  game."  In  the  midst  of  the 
ovations  and  thanksgivings,  in  the  first 
moments  of  exultation,  Le  signed  the 
death  warrant  of  six  mutineers,  de- 
serters, who,  as  long  before  as  Septem- 


ber, had  construed  a  service  of  the  old 
legal  term  of  three  months  as  a  release 
from  their  six  months'  engagement; 
and  the  severe  order  was  executed  at 
Mobile.  In  a  like  spirit  of  military 
exactitude,  New  Orleans  being  still 
held  under  martial  law,  to  the  chafing 
of  the  citizens,  he  silenced  a  newspaper 
editor  wrho  had  published  a  premature, 
incorrect  bulletin  of  peace;  banished 
the  French  citizens  who  were  disposed 
to  take  refuge  from  his  jurisdiction  in 
their  nationality;  arrested  an  impor- 
tant personage,  M.  Louaillier,  a  mem 
ber  of  the  Legislature,  who  argued  the 
question  in  print ;  and  when  Judge 
Hall,  of  the  United  States  Court, 
granted  a  writ  of  habeas  corpus,  to 
bring  the  affair  to  a  judicial  investiga- 
tion, he  was  promptly  seized  and  im- 
prisoned along  with  the  petitioner. 
The  last  affair  occurred  on  the  fifth  of 
March.  A  week  later,  the  official  news 
of  the  peace  treaty  was  received  from 
Washington,  and  the  iron  grasp  of  the 
general  at  length  relaxed  its  hold  of 
the  city.  The  civil  authority  succeeded 
to  the  military,  when  wounded  justice- 
asserted  its  power,  in  turn,  by  summon- 
ing the  victorious  general  to  her  bar, 
to  answer  for  his  recent  contempt  of 
court.  He  was  unwilling  to  bj3  entan- 
gled in  legal  pleadings,  and  cheerfully 
paid  the  imposed  fine  of  one  thousand 
dollars.  He  was  as  ready  in  submit- 
ting to  the  civil  authority  now  that  the 
war  was  over,  as  he  had  been  decided 
in  exacting  its  obedience  when  the 
safety  of  the  State  seemed  to  him  the 
chief  consideration.  Thirty  years 
after,  the  amount  of  the  fine,  princi- 
pal and  interest  was  repaid  him  by 
Congress. 


636 


ANDEEW  JACKSON. 


The  reception  of  the  victorious  de- 
fender of  New  Orleans,  on  his  return  to 
Nashville,  and  subsequent  visit,  in  au- 
tumn, to  the  seat  of  government,  was 
a  continual  ovation.  On  his  route,  at 
Lynchburgh,  in  Virginia,  he  was  met 
by  the  venerable  Thomas  Jefferson, 
who  toasted  him  at  a  banquet  of  citi- 
zens. The  administration,  organizing 
anew  the  military  defence  of  the  coun- 
try, created  him  major-general  of  the 
southern  division  of  the  army,  the 
whole  force  being  arranged  in  two  de- 
partments, of  which  the  northern  was 
assigned  to  General  Brown. 

It  was  not  long  before  the  name  of 
Jackson  was  again  to  fill  the  public 
ear,  and  impart  its  terrors  alike  to  the 
enemy  and  to  his  own  government. 
The  speck  of  war  arose  in  Florida, 
which,  what  with  runaway  negroes, 
hostile  Indians,  filibustering  adventur- 
ers, and  the  imbecility  of  the  Spanish 
rule,  became  a  constant  source  of  irrita- 
tion to  the  adjoining  American  States. 
There  were  various  warlike  prelimina- 
ries, and  at  last,  towards  the  end  of 
1817,  a  murderous  attack  by  the  Semi- 
noles  upon  a  United  States  boat's  crew 
ascending  the  Appalachicola.  General 
Jackson  was  called  into  the  field, 
chargecl  with  the  suppression  of  the 
war.  Eager  for  the  service,  he  sprang 
to  the  work,  and  conducted  it  in  his 
own  fashion,  "  taking  the  responsibili- 
ty" throughout,  summoning  volunteers 
to  accompany  him  from  Tennessee  with- 
out the  formality  of  the  civil  authority, 
advancing  rapidly  into  Florida  after 
his  arrival  at  the  frontier,  capturing  the 
Spanish  fort  of  St.  Mark's,  and  push- 
ing thence  to  the  Suwanee.  General 
M'Intosh,  the  half-breed  who  accompa- 


nied his  march,  performed  feats  oi 
valor  in  the  destruction  of  the  Semi- 
noles.  At  the  former  of  these  places,  a 
trader  from  New  Providence,  a  Scotch- 
man named  Arbutlmot,  a  superior 
member  of  his  class,  and  a  pacific  man, 
fell  into  his  hands ;  and  in  the  latter,  a 
vagrant  English  military  adventurer, 
one  Ambrister.  Both  of  these  men 
were  held  under  arrest,  charged  with 
complicity  with  the  Indian  aggressions, 
and  though  entirely  irresponsible  to 
the  American  commander  of  this  mili- 
tary raid,  "/ere  summarily  tried  under 
his  order  by  a  court-martial  on  Spanish 
territory,  at  St.  Mark's,  found  guilty, 
and  executed  by  his  order  on  the  spot. 
He  even  refused  to  receive  the  recon- 
sideration of  the  court  of  its  sentence 
of  Ambrister,  substituting  stripes  and 
imprisonment  for  death.  Ambrister 
was  shot,  and  Arbutlmot  hung  from 
the  yard-arm  of  his  own  vessel  in  the 
harbor.  During  the  remainder  of  Jack- 
son's life,  these  names  rang  through 
the  country  with  a  fearful  emphasis  in 
the  strife  of  parties.  Of  the  many 
difficulties  in  the  way  of  his  eulogists, 
this  is,  perhaps,  the  most  considerable. 
His  own  explanation,  that  he  was  per- 
forming a  simple  act  of  justice,  would 
seem,  with  his  previous  execution  of 
the  six  mutineers,  to  rest  upon  a  par- 
tial study  of  the  testimony ;  but  thir 
responsibility  should  of  course  be  di- 
vided with  the  members  of  his  court- 
martial.  The  chief  remaining  events 
of  the  campaign  were  an  angry  corres- 
pondence with  the  governor  of  Georgia, 
in  respect  to  an  encroachment  on  his 
authority  in  ordering  an  attack  on  an 
Indian  village,  and  the  capture  of  POD 
sacola,  in  which  he  left  a  garrison. 


ANDREW   JACKSON. 


63'< 


Reckoning-day  with  the  government 
was  next  in  order.  The  debate  in  Con- 
gress on  the  Florida  transactions  was 
long  and  animated,  Henry  Clay  bear- 
ing a  conspicuous  part  in  the  opposi- 
tion. The  resolutions  of  censure  were 
lost  by  a  large  majority  in  the  House.- 
The  failure  to  convict  was  a  virtual  vote 
of  thanks.  Fortified  by  the  result,  the 
general,  who  had  been  in  Washington 
during  the  debate,  made  a  triumphal 
visit  to  Philadelphia  and  New  York. 
At  the  latter  place  he  was  presented 
with  the  freedom  of  the  city  in  a  gold 
box,  which,  a  topic  for  one  of  the  poets 
of  the  "  Croakers  "  at  the  time,  has  be- 
come a  matter  of  interest  since,  in  the 
discussion  growing  out  of  a  provision 
of  the  General's  will.  He  left  the  gift 
to  the  bravest  of  the  New  York  officers 
in  the  next  war.  It  was  finally  be- 
stowed, in  1850,  upon  General  Ward 
B.  Burnett,  the  colonel  of  a  New  York 
regiment  distinguished  in  the  Mexican 
war.  The  original  presentation  took 
place  at  the  City  Hall,  in  February, 
1819. 

The  protracted  negotiations  with 
Spain  for  the  purchase  of  Florida  being 
now  brought  to  an  end  by  the  acquisi- 
tion of  the  country,  General  Jackson 
was  appointed  by  President  Monroe 
the  first  governor  of  the  Territory.  He 
was  present  at  the  formal  cession  at 
Pensacola,  on  the  17th  of  July,  1821, 
and  entered  upon  his  new  duties  with 
his  usual  vigor — a  vigor  in  one  in- 
stance, at  least,  humorously  dispropor- 
tioned  to  the  scene,  in  a  notable  dis- 
pute with  the  Spanish  government,  in 
the  course  of  which  there  was  a  fresh 
imbroglio  with  a  United  States  judge, 
and  the  foreign  functionary  was  ludi- 


crously locked  up  in  the  calaboose-- 
all about  the  delivery  of  certain  unim- 
portant papers.  On  a  question  of  au- 
thority, it  was  Jackson's  habit  to  go 
straightforward,  without  looking  to 
see  what  important  modifying  circum- 
stances there  might  be  to  the  right  or 
left.  It  was  a  military  trait  whjch 
served  him  very  well  on  important  oc- 
casions in  war,  and  subsequently  in 
one  great  struggle,  that  of  the  Bank, 
in  peace;  but  in  smaller  mixed  mat- 
ters, it  might  easily  lead  him  astray. 
For  this  Don  Callava's  comedy,  we 
must  refer  the  reader  to  Mr.  Parton's 
full  and  entertaining  narrative — not 
the  most  imposing,  but  certainly  not 
the  least  instructive  portion  of  his 
book.  The  Florida  governorship  was 
not  suited  to  the  demands  of  Jackson's 
nature;  his  powers  were  too  limited 
and  restricted ;  the  irritation  of  the 
Spanish  quarrel  was  not  calculated  to 
lighten  his  disease,  and  Mrs.  Jackson 
was  at  his  side  to  plead  the  superior 
claims  of  home.  Thither,  after  a  few 
months'  absence,  he  returned,  doubt- 
less greatly  to  the  relief  of  the  Secre- 
tary of  State,  Mr.  Adams,  who  said  at 
the  time  to  a  friend,  "  he  dreaded  the 
arrival  of  a  mail  from  Florida,  not 
knowing  what  General  Jackson  might 
do  next."  The  remainder  of  General 
Jackson's  life  may  be  regarded  aa 
chiefly  political ;  it  is  rather  as  a  man 
of  action  in  politics,  than  as  a  theoreti- 
cal statesman,  in  any  sense,  that  he  ia 
to  be  considered. 

It  is  not  at  all  surprising  that  such  a 
man  should  be  summoned  to  the  Pre- 
sidency. He  was  nominated  by  tho 
legislature  of  his  own  State  in  18-.-1, 
which  sent  him  again  to  the  Senate 


638 


ANDREW  JACKSON. 


and  be  was  highest  on  the  list  of  the 
candidates  voted  for  the  following 
year — he  had  ninety-nine  out  of  two 
hundred  and  sixty-one  votes — when 
the  election  was  carried  into  the  House 
of  Representatives,  and  Adams  was 
chosen  by  the  influence  of  Henry  Clay. 
At  the  next  election,  he  was  borne  tri- 
umphantly into  the  office,  receiving 
more  than  double  the  number  of  votes 
of  his  antagonist,  Mr.  Adams.  The 
vote  was  one  hundred  and  seventy- 
eight  to  eighty-three.  At  the  election 
of  1832,  the  third  time  Jackson's  popu- 
larity was  tested  in  this  way,  the  vote 
stood  for  Clay  forty-nine,  for  Jackson 
two  hundred  and  thirty-nine. 

The  record  of  these  eight  years  of 
his  Presidential  service,  from  1829  to 
1837,  is  the  modern  history  of  the 
democratic  party,  of  the  exertions  of 
its  most  distinguished  representatives, 
of  the  establishment  of  its  most  che- 
rished principles — its  anti-bank  creed, 
in  the  overthrow  of  the  national  bank, 
and  origination  of  the  sub-treasury 
system,  which  went  into  operation  with 
his  successor — the  reduction  of  the 
tariff — the  opposition  to  internal  im- 
provements— the  payment  of  the  na- 
tional debt.  In  addition  to  the  settle- 
ments of  these  long  agitated  questions, 
his  administration  was  signalized  by 
the  removal  of  the  Cherokees  from 
Georgia,  and  the  Creeks  from  Florida ; 
while  its  foreign  policy  was  candid  and 
vigorous,  bringing  to  a  satisfactory 
adjustment  the  outstanding  claims  on 
France  and  other  nations,  and  main- 
taining friendly  relations  with  England. 
In  all  these  measures,  his  energetic  hand 
was  felt,  but  particularly  was  his  pecu-  , 
liar  character  manifested  in  his  veto  oi 


1832,  and  general  conduct  of  the  bank 
question,  the  collection  of  the  French 
indemnity,  and  his  enforcement  of  the 
national  authority  in  South  Carolina 
The  censure  of  the  Senate  on  the 
28th  March,  1834,  for  his  removal  of  the. 
deposits  of  the  public  money  from  the 
bank  as  "  an  assumption  of  authority 
and  power  not  conferred  by  the  Consti- 
tution and  laws,  but  in  derogation  of 

'  O 

both  "  — a  censure  supported  by  the  ex- 
traordinary coalition  of  Calhoun,  Clay 
and  Webster,  measures  the  extent  of 
the  opposition  his  course  encountered 
in  Congress ;  while  the  Expunging  Re- 
solution of  1837,  blotted  out  that  con- 
demnation, and  indicated  the  reception 
and  progress  of  his  opinions  with  the 
several  States  in  the  brief  interim.  The 
personal  attack  made  upon  him  in 
1835,  by  a  poor  lunatic  at  the  door  of 
the  Capitol, — "a  diseased  mind  acted 
upon  by  a  general  outcry  against  a  pub- 
lic man,"* — may  show  the  sentiment 
with  which  a  large  portion  of  the  press 
and  a  considerable  popular  party  habit- 
ually treated  him. 

The  love  of  Andrew  Jackson  for 
the  Union  deserves  at,  this  time  more 
than  a  passing  mention.  It  was  em- 
phatically the  creed  of  his  head  and 
heart.  He  had  no  toleration  for  those 
who  sought  to  weaken  this  great  in- 
stinct of  nationality.  No  sophism 
could  divert  his  understanding  from 
the  plainest  obligations  of  duty  to  his 
whole  country.  He  saw  as  clearly  aa 
the  subtlest  logician  in  the  Senate 
the  inevitable  tendencies  of  any  argu- 
ment which  would  impair  the  aiie- 
giance  of  the  people  of  the  States 
to  the  central  authority.  He  could- 

*  Benton's  "Thirty  Years'  View,"  I.  523. 


AKDREW  JACKSON. 


639 


not  make  such  a  speech  as  Web- 
ster delivered  on  the  subject,  but  he 
knew  as  well  as  Webster  the  abyss 
into  which  nullification  would  plunge 
its  advocates.  His  vigorous  policy 
saved  his  own  generation  the  trials  to 
which  ours  has  been  subjected.  Had 
his  spirit  still  ruled  at  the  proper  mo- 
ment  in  the  national  administration, 
we  too  might  have  been  spared  the  un- 
told evils  of  a  gigantic  rebellion.  It  is 
remarkable  that  it  was  predicted  by 
him — not  in  its  extent,  for  his  patriot- 
ism and  the  ardor  of  his  temperament 
would  not  have  allowed  him  to  imagine 
a  defection  so  wide-spread,  or  so  la- 
mentable a  lack  of  energy  in  giving 
encouragement  to  its  growth — but  in 
its  motive  and  pretences.  When  nulli- 
fication was  laid  at  rest,  his  keen  in- 
sight saw  that  the  rebellious  spirit 
which  gave  the  doctrine  birth  was  not 
extinguished.  He  pronounced  the  tar- 
iif  only  the  pretext  of  factious  and 
malignant  disturbers  of  the  public 
peace,  "who  would  involve  their  coun- 
try in  a  civil  war  and  all  the  evils  in 
its  train,  that  they  might  reign  and 
ride  on  its  whirlwinds,  and  direct  the 
storm."  Disunion  and  a  southern  con- 
federacy, and  not  the  tariff,  he  said, 
were  the  real  objects  of  the  conspira- 
tors, adding,  with  singular  sagacity, 
"  the  next  pretext  will  be  the  negro  or 
the  slavery  question."* 

Eight  years  of  honorable  repose  re- 
mained to  the  victor  in  so  many  battles 
military  and  political,  after  his  retire- 
ment from  the  Presidency.  They  were 
passed  in  his  seat  near  Nashville,  the 
home  of  his  happy  married  life,  but  no 

*  Letter  to  the  Rev.   Andrew  J.    Crawford. 
Washington,  May  1,  1833. 


longer  cheered  by  the  warm-hearted, 
sincere,  devout  sharer  of  his  manj 
trials.  That  excellent  wife  had  been 
taken  from  him  on  the  eve  of  his  first 
occupation  of  the  Presidential  chaii, 
and  her  memory  only  was  left,  with  its 
inviting  lessons  of  piety,  to  temper  the 
passions  of  the  true-hearted"  old  man  as 
he  resigned  himself  to  religion  and  the 

O  .  O 

cares  of  another  and  better  world.  He 
had  early  adopted,  as  his  own  sou,  a 
nephew  of  his  wife,  and  the  child  grew 
up,  always  fondly  cherished  by  him. 
bore  his  name,  and  inherited  his  estate. 
"  The  Hermitage,"  the  seat  of  a  liberal 
hospitality,  never  lacked  intimates  dear 
to  him.  He  had  the  good  heart  of  Dr. 
Johnson  in  taking  to  his  home  and  at- 
taching to  himself  friends  who  grew 
strong  again  in  his  manly  confidence. 
Thus,  in  the  enjoyment  of  a  tranquil 
old  age,  looking  back  upon  a  career 
which  belonged  to  history,  he  met  the 
increasing  infirmities  of  ill-health  with 
pious  equanimity,  a  member  of  the 
Presbyterian  Church,  where  his  wife 
had  so  fondly  worshipped — life  slowly 
ebbing  from  him  in  the  progress  of  his 
dropsical  complaint — till  one  summer 
day,  the  eighth  of  June,  1845,  the  child 
of  the  Revolution,  an  old  man  of  sev- 
enty-eight, closed  his  eyes  in  lasting 
repose  at  his  beloved  Hermitage. 

Few  of  the  eminent  men  of  America, 
whose  acts  are  recorded  in  these  pages, 
entered  upon  the  public  stage  so  early 
and  continued  on  it  so  late,  as  the  sub- 
ject of  this  sketch.  To  no  one  but  him- 
self was  it  reserved  to  bridge  over  so 
completely  the  era  of  the  Revolution 
with  the  latest  phase  of  political  life  in 
our  day.  The  youth  who  had  suffered 
wounds  and  imprisonment  at  the  hands 


840 


ANDltEW  JACKSOK 


of  a  British  officer  in  the  war  of  Inde- 
pendence, was  destined  long  after,  when 
a  whole  generation  had  left  the  stage, 
to  close  a  second  war  with  that  power- 
ful nation  by  a  triumphant  victory; 
and  when  the  fresh  memory  of  that 
had  passed  away,  and  men  were  read- 
ing the  record  in  history,  the  same  hero, 
raised  to  the  highest  honor  of  the  State, 
was  to  stand  forth,  not  simply  Presi- 
dent of  the  United  States,  but  the  ac- 
tive representative  of  a  new  order  of 
politics,  reaping  a  new  harvest  of  favor 
in  civil  administration,  which  would 
throw  his  military  glory  into  the  shade. 
Nor  was  this  all.  These  comprehen- 
sive associations,  much  as  they  include, 
leave  out  of  view  an  entirely  distinct 
phase  of  the  wonderful  career  of  this 
extraordinary  man.  A  rude  pioneer 
of  the  wilderness,  he  opened  the  path- 
way  of  civilization  to  his  countrymen, 
and  by  his  valor  in  a  series  of  bloody 
Indian  wars,  made  the  terrors  of  that 
formidable  race  a  matter  of  tradition 
in  lands  which  he  lived  to  see  bloom- 
ing with  culture  and  refinement.  A 


hero  in  his  boyhood,  when  Greene  was 
leading  his  southern  army  to  the  relief 
of  the  Carolinas,  he  was  in  Congress  the 
first  representative  of  a  new  State,  whei* 
Washington  was  President ;  and  when 
the  successors  of  that  chieftain,  Adams 
and  Jefferson,  had  at  length  disappear- 
ed from  the  earthly  scene  in  extreme  old 
age,  he,  a  man  more  of  the  future  than 
the  past,  sat  in  the  same  great  seat  of 
authority,  with  an  influence  not  inferior 
to  theirs.  Surrounded  by  these  circum- 
stances, in  the  rapid  development  of 
national  life,  in  the  infancy  and  prog- 
ress of  the  country,  if  he  had  been  a 
common  man  he  would  have  acquired 
distinction  from  his  position ;  but  it 
was  his  character  to  form  circumstances 
as  well  as  profit  by  them.  There  are 
few  cases  in  all  history  where,  under 
adverse  conditions,  the  man  was  so 
master  of  fortune.  The  simplest  recital 
of  his  life  carries  with  it  an  air  almost 
of  romance;  his  success  mocked  the 
wisdom  of  his  contemporaries,  and  will 
tax  the  best  powers  of  the  future  his- 
torians of  America  in  its  analysis. 


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